 Honesty and Integrity: Feicht R.E. and Appraisal, LLC.Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.
An appraiser's chief obligation is to their client.
Typically, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Consequently, appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing information to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally have to get it via your lender and not the appraiser.
Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, 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 whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Feicht R.E. and Appraisal, LLC. takes very seriously. When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Doing assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a bigger fee is unethical! We just don't do it. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value. As soon as you engage Feicht R.E. and Appraisal, LLC., we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the business principles we're known for. |
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