Honesty and Integrity: Harris Appraisal

We think of our business as a profession. The rigors of becoming 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 unquestionably be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

As appraisers our chief obligation is to his or her client. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and keeping a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Harris Appraisal.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

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

We meet or beat the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on 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. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would up 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 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 going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Harris Appraisal, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.