Honesty and Integrity: Cheryl A. Zormerier

Generally, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have many responsibilities as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, 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 obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you normally have to get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and maintaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Cheryl A. Zormerier.

Appraisers can also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Cheryl A. Zormerier you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is not something we can consider 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 professions most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers inflate the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states 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," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Cheryl A. Zormerier, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.