Van Syckel Appraisal upholds the highest professional ethics

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but our primary duty is to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It follows that appraisers are typically limited to only disclosing information to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you would like a copy of the appraisal document, you normally should request it through your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the report, reaching and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Van Syckel Appraisal.

Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

	Van Syckel Appraisal has worked hard for its track record for producing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Van Syckel Appraisal you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value with the reward of getting paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly describes 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

When you engage Van Syckel Appraisal, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the high ethical standards we're known for.