 Peter Shriver upholds the utmost professional ethicsGenerally, appraising is a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have many responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Generally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has hired in order to maintain independence.
Subsequently, appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As
a homeowner, if you want to review the appraisal document, you normally have to get it from your lender instead of the appraiser.
Appraisers may regularly have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Peter Shriver you can rest assured that we abide by that rule. Peter Shriver holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve essentially a higher fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard. 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value. When you engage Peter Shriver, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for. |
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