Emily Sconyers upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days 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.

An appraiser's main 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 are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you should request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Emily Sconyers.

Appraisers may often have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited 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 duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Emily Sconyers you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. Other improper practices may be defined 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," 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 objectively determine the home or property value.

With Emily Sconyers, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.