![]() Honesty and Integrity: Di Cicco & AssociatesAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.
An appraiser's chief obligation is to their client.
Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Consequently, appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing information to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you normally should request it via your lender.
Appraisers may also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those 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 standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Di Cicco & Associates you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. We meet or exceed the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve a higher paycheck is unethical! This isn't how we operate. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value. With Di Cicco & Associates, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service. |