Wisconsin Residential Appraisal Services maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is generally a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

For an appraiser the main obligation is to his or her client. Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you require a copy of an appraisal report, you normally have to request it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Wisconsin Residential Appraisal Services.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, 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 Wisconsin Residential Appraisal Services you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we can't 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 no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the value of the home would inflate the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be defined 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 be confident we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Wisconsin Residential Appraisal Services, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.