 Honesty and Integrity: Lincoln Real Estate Services, LLCAppraising is, by and large, a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
We have quite a few obligations as appraisers, but our chief duty is to our clients.
Most of the time, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Subsequently, appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, plus many rules and regulations that must be followed. As
a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you generally should obtain it through your lender and not the appraiser.
Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of 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 third 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 clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Lincoln Real Estate Services, LLC takes very seriously. Lincoln Real Estate Services, LLC holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders based on contingency fees is never an option. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve essentially a higher fee is unethical! Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly defines unethical behavior 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. As soon as you engage Lincoln Real Estate Services, LLC, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the principles we're known for. |
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