For honest and ethical appraisals, trust Cris Currence

We think of our business as a profession. 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 rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Normally, for a normal 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 a copy of an appraisal report, you should request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Cris Currence, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will frequently be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Cris Currence you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We don't do that. 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 defines unethical behavior 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 confident we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Cris Currence, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.