Skyline Appraisal provides honest and ethical appraisals for Madison County

Honesty and Integrity: Skyline Appraisal

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

The appraiser's primary responsibility is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It follows that appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it via your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the assignment, acquiring 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 what we do every day at Skyline Appraisal.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. 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 order.


	Skyline Appraisal has an established reputation for completing appraisals with the highest of ethics. Contact us today to learn more.

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 - something else Skyline Appraisal diligently adheres to.

We meet or exceed the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. That means we can't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly states 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", or "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 provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Skyline Appraisal, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.