Honesty and Integrity: Sara Modock

Generally, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become 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 called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, acquiring and maintaining a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Sara Modock.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Sara Modock you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Sara Modock holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established 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," as well as 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 Sara Modock, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.