Honesty and Integrity: Winco

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

The appraiser's chief responsibility is to his or her client. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you normally have to obtain it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, acquiring and maintaining a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Winco.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Normally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Winco you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

Winco holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We can'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 fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be established by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior as the acceptance 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 going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Winco, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.