Honesty and Integrity: Donica Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

For an appraiser the main responsibility is to their client. More often than not, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and maintaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Donica Appraisals.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Donica Appraisals you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

Donica Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would raise the their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you request an appraisal from Donica 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.