 Honesty and Integrity: JKS Appraisal Services, Inc.By and large, 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 called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
The appraiser's chief obligation is to their client.
Generally, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you generally should obtain it via your lender and not the appraiser.
Appraisers will frequently be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.
There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at JKS Appraisal Services, Inc. you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. When busy with an order, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value and then get paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly defines a violation in ethics as the acceptance 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 at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value. With JKS Appraisal Services, Inc., you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service. |
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