KLM Appraisals upholds the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

As appraisers our primary responsibility is to their client. Generally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and keeping a certain 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 KLM Appraisals.

Appraisers may regularly have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at KLM Appraisals you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would raise the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be established by state law or professional societies 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 diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With KLM Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.