 Honesty and Integrity: Cardinal Real EstateAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients.
Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Certain elements pertaining to an assignment are to be discussed exclusively with the appraiser's client. As
a homeowner, if you would like to review an appraisal report, you generally have to request it through your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.
There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Cardinal Real Estate you can rest assured that we abide by that rule. When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve essentially a higher paycheck is unethical! Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly describes a violation in ethics 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value. When you engage Cardinal Real Estate, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the high ethical standards we're known for. |
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