Honesty and Integrity: James Wagner

We have many responsibilities as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has retained to maintain independence. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations to which we must adhere. As a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally should obtain it through your lender.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and sustaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at James Wagner.

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

	James Wagner has an established track record for performing appraisals with the highest of ethics. Contact us today to learn more.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - something else James Wagner diligently adheres to.

James Wagner holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments 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. It should be apparent to anyone that fabricating a property's value to achieve essentially a bigger fee is unethical! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also 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" as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With James Wagner, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service.