Keir's Appraisal Services upholds the highest professional ethics

By and large, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

As appraisers our chief obligation is to his or her client. Most of the time, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to review the appraisal document, you should obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, acquiring and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Keir's Appraisal Services.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Keir's Appraisal Services you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

While busy with an appraisal, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would increase the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical 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 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We 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.

With Keir's Appraisal Services, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.