MacDonnell Appraisals upholds the utmost professional ethics

By and large, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. It goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but first and foremost, we answer to our clients. Normally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients. To obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and conducting themselves professionally. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at MacDonnell Appraisals.

Appraisers can frequently have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at MacDonnell Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional societies 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.