Honesty and Integrity: John C. Burnett

Appraising is typically a long term career. 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 certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Most of the time, for a typical residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire a copy of an appraisal report, you should obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate sums appropriate to the nature of the report, reaching and maintaining an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at John C. Burnett.

Appraisers can frequently have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - something else John C. Burnett diligently adheres to.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we don't 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 biggest taboo, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would raise the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical 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 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With John C. Burnett, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.