Bridgewood Properties 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. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. 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. Generally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you normally have to obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Bridgewood Properties.

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

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Bridgewood Properties you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Bridgewood Properties holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be established by state law or professional organizations that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines unethical behavior 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," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

When you engage Bridgewood Properties we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.