Paul Moriconi maintains the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have a great deal of responsibilities as appraisers but our main duty is to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to request it from your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Paul Moriconi, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

Appraisers may also have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is limited to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Paul Moriconi you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines a violation in ethics 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 objectively determine the home or property value.

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