Sloan Real Estate Solutions maintains the highest professional ethics

Generally, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

As appraisers our chief obligation is to their client. Generally, for a typical residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require to review the appraisal document, you should request it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the nature of the assignment, acquiring and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Sloan Real Estate Solutions, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

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

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - something else Sloan Real Estate Solutions takes very seriously.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. We don't 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 probably the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would inflate the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional 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 accepting 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 diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Sloan Real Estate Solutions, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.