Ballard Appraisal Service provides honest and ethical appraisals for Minnehaha County

Honesty and Integrity: Ballard Appraisal Service

Typically, appraising is a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

The appraiser's primary responsibility is to their client. 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 contracted in order to maintain independence. Consequently, appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to request it via your lender.

Other responsibilities include numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and maintaining a certain 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 Ballard Appraisal Service.

Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.


	Ballard Appraisal Service has worked hard for its track record for completing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.

There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Ballard Appraisal Service you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

Ballard Appraisal Service holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. That means we can't 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 an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly states 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", 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 assured we are working hard to get you an accurate home or property value.

As soon as you order an appraisal from Ballard Appraisal Service, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.