Honesty and Integrity: Colby Dunagan Appraisals LLC

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we are bound by an ethical code.

As appraisers our primary responsibility is to their client. Most of the time, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you want to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the parameters of the report, attaining and keeping an adequate 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 Colby Dunagan Appraisals LLC.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - something else Colby Dunagan Appraisals LLC makes a part of their standard routine.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Colby Dunagan Appraisals LLC, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.