Hatfield Real Estate Consulting maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is typically a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's primary responsibility is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. 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 would like a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the assignment, reaching and maintaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Hatfield Real Estate Consulting.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - something else Hatfield Real Estate Consulting takes very seriously.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations that the 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 assured we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Hatfield Real Estate Consulting, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.