Honesty and Integrity: MFK Appraisals

Generally, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have many responsibilities as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Generally, for a typical residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire a copy of an appraisal report, you should obtain it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at MFK Appraisals, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited 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 standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at MFK Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

MFK Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the estimate of the home would increase the their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With MFK Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, honest service.