Honesty and Integrity: Don Hess Appraisal Services

The appraiser's main responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has brought in to maintain independence. It follows that appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it through your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate calculations appropriate to the scope of the assignment, acquiring and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Here at Don Hess Appraisal Services, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

	Don Hess Appraisal Services has worked hard for its reputation for producing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at Don Hess Appraisal Services you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

Don Hess Appraisal Services holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value and then get paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also defines 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you engage Don Hess Appraisal Services, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.