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Appraisal Solutions provides honest and ethical appraisals for Etowah County

Honesty and Integrity: Appraisal Solutions

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's primary responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has contracted in order to maintain independence. Thereon, appraisers are typically limited to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you normally have to request it via your lender.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, 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 standard operating procedure for us at Appraisal Solutions.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisal Solutions has an established reputation for providing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.


Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Appraisal Solutions makes a part of their standard routine.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Doing assignments based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. In other words, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value with the reward of getting paid more money! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value.

When you request an appraisal from Appraisal Solutions, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the principles we're known for.