Hill Appraisal maintains the utmost professional ethics

We think of what we do as a profession. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at Hill Appraisal.

Appraisers will often be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Hill Appraisal you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We won't 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 the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would raise the 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 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 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 Hill Appraisal, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.