Caywood Appraisals maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. Requirements to become 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 considered a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Normally, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you desire a copy of the appraisal document, you should obtain it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate figures appropriate to the parameters of the report, acquiring and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Caywood Appraisals.

Appraisers will often be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility 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 assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Caywood Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When creating reports, 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 can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would raise the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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 assured we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Caywood Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.