Homestead Real Estate Services, LLC upholds the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

We have many obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. More often than not, for a normal residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you generally have to request it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Homestead Real Estate Services, LLC.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Homestead Real Estate Services, LLC you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When busy with an appraisal, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. We have a responsibility not to 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. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the estimate of the home would raise the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Homestead Real Estate Services, LLC, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.