For honest and ethical appraisals, trust Scott St. Clair

Appraising is typically a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

An appraiser's primary responsibility is to his or her client. More often than not, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you require a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate figures appropriate to the scope of the report, reaching and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Scott St. Clair.

Appraisers can sometimes have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically 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 job.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Scott St. Clair you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When working on an appraisal, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the 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," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Scott St. Clair, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.