Bryan L. Wedmore upholds 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 in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we are bound by an ethical code.

We have many obligations as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Most of the time, for a typical residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you normally have to obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and keeping a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Bryan L. Wedmore.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Bryan L. Wedmore you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can'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 perhaps the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would invite appraisal fraud since increasing the value of the home would raise the their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you order an appraisal from Bryan L. Wedmore we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.