Gail Wagner maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming 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 unquestionably be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the main responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you should get it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the assignment, reaching and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Gail Wagner.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Normally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Gail Wagner you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

While working on an appraisal, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders that contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers inflate the value of homes or properties to increase their 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 unethical behavior 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

When you order an appraisal from Gail Wagner 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.