 For honest and ethical appraisals, count on Mathes Appraisals LLCAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have quite a few obligations as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Generally, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Certain details pertaining to an assignment are to be discussed with the appraiser's client. So, as
a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you generally should obtain it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Mathes Appraisals LLC you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. We meet or exceed the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve a bigger paycheck is unethical! We just don't do it. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") also defines a violation in ethics as accepting 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to get you an accurate home or property value. With Mathes Appraisals LLC, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
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