Denise Smallwood maintains the utmost professional ethics

Generally, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Normally, for a typical residential appraisal, 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 require to review an appraisal report, you generally have to obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate figures appropriate to the scope of the report, acquiring and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Denise Smallwood.

Appraisers may regularly have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Normally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - something else Denise Smallwood makes a part of their standard routine.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the value of the home would up the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Denise Smallwood, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.