Honesty and Integrity: Floyd Wicker and Associates

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 these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers but above everything we answer to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you would like to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, reaching and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at Floyd Wicker and Associates.

Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty 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 job.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Floyd Wicker and Associates you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Floyd Wicker and Associates holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations that the 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 rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

As soon as you engage Floyd Wicker and Associates we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the an ethical approach with appraisals that we're known for.