Ross Batey and Associates provides honest and ethical appraisals for County

Honesty and Integrity: Ross Batey and Associates

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

An appraiser's primary obligation is to their client. More often than not, for a standard residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It's important to know that certain matters pertaining to an assignment are to be shared exclusively with the appraiser's client. So, as a homeowner, if you would like to review an appraisal report, you normally should obtain it from your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate calculations appropriate to the scope of the report, acquiring and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Ross Batey and Associates, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to 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 only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.


	Ross Batey and Associates has worked hard for its reputation for producing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - something else Ross Batey and Associates takes very seriously.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Accepting orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we can't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly describes 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", or "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.

When you order an appraisal from Ross Batey and Associates, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the high ethical standards we're known for.