Peak Appreasing provides honest and ethical appraisals for Wake County

Peak Appreasing upholds the highest professional ethics

By and large, appraising is 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 definitely be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

The appraiser's main responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Subsequently, appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations that must be followed. So, as a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally should get it through your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate calculations appropriate to the parameters of the report, acquiring and sustaining a particular level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Peak Appreasing.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary role is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.


	Peak Appreasing has worked hard for its reputation for producing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Peak Appreasing you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Accepting orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value and then get paid more money! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you request an appraisal from Peak Appreasing, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.