Honesty and Integrity: Choens Appraisal Service, LLC

We consider our our job a profession. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Most of the time, for a standard 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 review an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate figures appropriate to the scope of the report, attaining and keeping a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Choens Appraisal Service, LLC.

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

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - something else Choens Appraisal Service, LLC takes very seriously.

Choens Appraisal Service, LLC holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for professional behavior. We can't 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 the fee only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing 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 don't do that. Other improper 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Choens Appraisal Service, LLC, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.