Honesty and Integrity: Frost Appraisal Services, LLCAppraising 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 these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
The appraiser's primary obligation is to their client.
Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has retained to maintain independence.
Certain details pertaining to an assignment are to be shared with the appraiser's client. As
a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally should obtain it through your lender.
Appraisers may also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at Frost Appraisal Services, LLC you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule. We meet or exceed the industry standards and rules set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value with the reward of getting paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value. With Frost Appraisal Services, LLC, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service. |