Honesty and Integrity: PEGASUS APPRAISALS

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become 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 must follow strict ethical considerations.

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. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at PEGASUS APPRAISALS.

Appraisers may often have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - something else PEGASUS APPRAISALS diligently adheres to.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would up the fee. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior 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 diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With PEGASUS APPRAISALS, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.