Honesty and Integrity: Soult Valuation Group

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. More often than not, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you normally have to get it from your lender. Other obligations also include, accurate figures appropriate to the scope of the report, attaining and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Soult Valuation Group .

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Soult Valuation Group you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Soult Valuation Group holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is not something we can consider 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 perhaps the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the value of the home would increase the fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be defined by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We 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.

With Soult Valuation Group , you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.