For honest and ethical appraisals, count on Sullivan Appraisals

I have a lot of obligations as an appraiser, but above everything I answer to my clients. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has hired in order to maintain independence. Certain details relating to an assignment are to be shared with the appraiser's client. As a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally should request it through your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other responsibilities include accurate sums appropriate to the parameters of the report, attaining and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Sullivan Appraisals, I take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including 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 role is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

	Sullivan Appraisals has an established reputation for producing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Sullivan Appraisals you can rest assured that I abide by that rule.

 

Doing assignments where my fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something I consider. That means I am not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. Anyone should be able to see that fabricating a home's value to achieve essentially a higher fee is unethical! This isn't how I operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly states unethical behavior 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", or "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 working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Sullivan Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.