Honesty and Integrity: Gumina Team Appraisal

We think of what we do as a profession. 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 unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you generally have to obtain it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and sustaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at Gumina Team Appraisal.

Appraisers will sometimes 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 restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Gumina Team Appraisal you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the estimate of the home would increase the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established 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 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Gumina Team Appraisal, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.