The Butler Group upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is, by and large, a long term career. 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 dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

An appraiser's main responsibility is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, 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 desire to review an appraisal report, you normally have to get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at The Butler Group.

Appraisers will often 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 roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at The Butler Group you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't 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 industries biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers increase the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. Other unprofessional practices may be established 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 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 objectively determine the home or property value.

With The Butler Group, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.