Nealand Appraisals upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

The appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Nealand Appraisals.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at Nealand Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

While working on an appraisal, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the value of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies to which an 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.

When you engage Nealand Appraisals 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.