Honesty and Integrity: Hebert Appraisal

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Generally, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally have to get it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Hebert Appraisal.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Hebert Appraisal you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on assignments that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers increase the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines unethical behavior 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," "the amount of a value opinion," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Hebert Appraisal, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.