Honesty and Integrity: Rocky Mountain Appraisal

We think of our business as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

For an appraiser the chief responsibility is to his or her client. More often than not, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you require a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and maintaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Rocky Mountain Appraisal.

Appraisers may often have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at Rocky Mountain Appraisal you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would raise the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional organizations that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Rocky Mountain Appraisal, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.