Wheeler Appraisals upholds the utmost professional ethics

By and large, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Most of the time, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you want a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the parameters of the report, reaching and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Wheeler Appraisals.

Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Wheeler Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the value of the home would inflate 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 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," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

When you engage Wheeler Appraisals we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.