Crosstown Appraisals maintains the highest professional ethics

Appraising is typically 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 definitely be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

As appraisers our primary responsibility is to his or her client. Generally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you desire to review the appraisal document, you should get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and keeping a particular 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 Crosstown Appraisals.

Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at Crosstown Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

When creating reports, 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 don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would raise the fee. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines unethical behavior 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Crosstown Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.