Southern Illinois Appraisal upholds the highest professional ethics

We consider our our business a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

The appraiser's chief responsibility is to his or her client. More often than not, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate figures appropriate to the scope of the assignment, attaining and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Southern Illinois Appraisal.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of 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 order.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at Southern Illinois Appraisal you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional organizations 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," as well as other situations. We diligently 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 Southern Illinois Appraisal, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.