Summit Realty Consultants maintains the highest professional ethics

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called 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 main responsibility is to his or her client. Normally, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you want to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the nature of the report, reaching and maintaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Summit Realty Consultants.

Appraisers may often have fiduciary obligations 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 roll is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at Summit Realty Consultants you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don't 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 probably the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations that the 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 at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Summit Realty Consultants, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.