Southeastern Appraisal Group maintains the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming 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 dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Normally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Southeastern Appraisal Group.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Southeastern Appraisal Group you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on orders that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't 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 probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers inflate the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. 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 states 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," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Southeastern Appraisal Group, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.