Walker Residential Appraisal Services upholds the highest professional ethics

By and large, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, reaching and keeping an appropriate 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 Residential Appraisal Services.

Appraisers will frequently need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those 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 duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Walker Residential Appraisal Services you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers increase the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional organizations that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (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," "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 doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Walker Residential Appraisal Services, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.