For honest and ethical appraisals, trust Stonebridge Capital

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few 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 have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Stonebridge Capital, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

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 Stonebridge Capital you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

When working on an assignment, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would raise the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies 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 rest easy knowing we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Stonebridge Capital, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.