Mark Finney Appraisals maintains the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Most of the time, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Mark Finney Appraisals, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers can frequently have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Mark Finney Appraisals takes very seriously.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would inflate the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines a violation in ethics as the acceptance of an assignment that is contingent on "the reporting of a pre-determined result (e.g., opinion of value)," "a direction in assignment results that favors the cause of the client," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you order an appraisal from Mark Finney Appraisals we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.