Honesty and Integrity: J. W. Enterprises

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you want to review the appraisal document, you normally have to request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at J. W. Enterprises, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will often be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at J. W. Enterprises you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the estimate of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. 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 states 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," "the amount of a value opinion," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With J. W. Enterprises, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, honest service.