Honesty and Integrity: Walker Appraisal Service

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the main responsibility is to his or her client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you require to review the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the assignment, reaching and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Walker Appraisal Service.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Walker Appraisal Service you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would inflate the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior 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," "the amount of a value opinion," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you engage Walker Appraisal Service we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the an ethical approach with appraisals that we're known for.