For honest and ethical appraisals, trust Northern Living Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult 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 are bound by an ethical code.

For an appraiser the primary responsibility is to his or her client. More often than not, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you should request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the report, attaining and maintaining an adequate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Northern Living Appraisals, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Northern Living Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would up the fee. We don't do that. Other improper practices may be defined by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines unethical behavior 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 diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Northern Living Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.