Honesty and Integrity: Andrea Paskorz

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

For an appraiser the chief responsibility is to their client. Most of the time, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you want to review the appraisal document, you normally have to request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, attaining 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 Andrea Paskorz.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Andrea Paskorz you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the value of the home would increase 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 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 assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Andrea Paskorz, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.