LightHouse Appraisals upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is generally a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

The appraiser's chief obligation is to their client. Normally, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of 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 of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to review the appraisal document, you generally should obtain it from your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other responsibilities include accurate calculations appropriate to the scope of the assignment, reaching and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics is what we do every day at LightHouse Appraisals.

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


	LightHouse Appraisals has an established track record for providing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at LightHouse Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

LightHouse Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. That means we can't 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 a larger value and then get paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly defines 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With LightHouse Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.