Jim Roberts Realty upholds the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is generally a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days 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.

For an appraiser the main responsibility is to their client. More often than not, in residential practice, 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 require to review an appraisal report, you normally have to get it through your lender. Other obligations 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 Jim Roberts Realty.

Appraisers will frequently be required to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, 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 job.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Jim Roberts Realty you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and rules set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to 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 perhaps the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

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

With Jim Roberts Realty, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.