Valbridge Property Advisors maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the chief responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire to review the appraisal document, you should get it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate calculations appropriate to the nature of the report, acquiring and sustaining a respectable 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 Valbridge Property Advisors.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Valbridge Property Advisors you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

Valbridge Property Advisors holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would increase the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Valbridge Property Advisors, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.