Hawaiian Appraisals maintains the highest professional ethicsWe consider our job as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
We have quite a few obligations as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has contracted in order to maintain independence.
It's important to know that many matters pertaining to an assignment are to be discussed exclusively with the appraiser's client. As
a homeowner, if you desire a copy of an appraisal report, you normally have to request it from your lender.
Appraisers may sometimes have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.
Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Hawaiian Appraisals makes a part of their standard routine. We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Accepting assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value and then get paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also describes 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to get you an accurate home or property value. With Hawaiian Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service. |