Honesty and Integrity: Duncan & Associates

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 called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

As appraisers our main obligation is to their client. Generally, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and sustaining an appropriate 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 Duncan & Associates.

Appraisers may frequently have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - something else Duncan & Associates takes very seriously.

Duncan & Associates holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you request an appraisal from Duncan & Associates we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.