Baxter Appraisal Group maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have many obligations as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. 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 require to review the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Baxter Appraisal Group.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, 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 store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Baxter Appraisal Group you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

Baxter Appraisal Group holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid 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 increasing the estimate of the home would inflate the 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 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you engage Baxter Appraisal Group we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.