Honesty and Integrity: Wertenberger & Associates Inc

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's primary responsibility is to their client. Most of the time, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you normally have to request it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate figures appropriate to the parameters of the report, attaining and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Wertenberger & Associates Inc.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Wertenberger & Associates Inc you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Wertenberger & Associates Inc holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we don't 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 professions biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would up the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be defined 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," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Wertenberger & Associates Inc, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.