Honesty and Integrity: The Caldwell Group

We consider our our job a profession. 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 called a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the chief responsibility is to his or her client. Generally, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you want to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should obtain it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the parameters of the assignment, acquiring and maintaining an adequate 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 The Caldwell Group.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited 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 duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at The Caldwell Group you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When working on an assignment, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on assignments that contingency fees is never an option. 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 perhaps the appraisal professions most important rule, 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 unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies 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," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With The Caldwell Group, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.