Stevens Shiflett maintains the utmost professional ethics

We think of our job as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers but above everything we answer to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, 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 review the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, attaining and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Stevens Shiflett.

Appraisers will sometimes be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Stevens Shiflett you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don'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 perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also 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," "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 doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

As soon as you engage Stevens Shiflett we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.