Honesty and Integrity: CoreLogic

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

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require to review the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and keeping a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at CoreLogic.

Appraisers will frequently need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at CoreLogic you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing 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 set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you order an appraisal from CoreLogic 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.