Honesty and Integrity: Lone Star Appraisal Service

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. 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 definitely be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

An appraiser's chief obligation is to his or her client. Generally, 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 a homeowner, if you require to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and sustaining an adequate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Lone Star Appraisal Service, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

Appraisers will sometimes be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Lone Star Appraisal Service takes very seriously.

Lone Star Appraisal Service holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is not something we can consider 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 perhaps the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would up the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "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 working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Lone Star Appraisal Service, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.