Honesty and Integrity: Personal Service Realty's Residential Valuation Group

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but our main duty is to our clients. Typically, 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 brought in to maintain independence. It follows that appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you normally should get it through your lender.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Personal Service Realty's Residential Valuation Group, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

	Personal Service Realty's Residential Valuation Group has an established track record for completing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Personal Service Realty's Residential Valuation Group makes a part of their standard routine.

We meet or exceed the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly states 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 assured we are doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value.

With Personal Service Realty's Residential Valuation Group, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.