Honesty and Integrity: Berge Company Appraisers

We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers, but our chief duty is to our clients. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, 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. Thereon, appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you want to review the appraisal document, you normally have to get it from your lender.

Other obligations include accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the report, attaining and maintaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Berge Company Appraisers, we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role 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.

	Berge Company Appraisers has worked hard for its track record for completing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - something else Berge Company Appraisers takes very seriously.

Berge Company Appraisers holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve a bigger paycheck is unethical! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 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" in addition to other situations We 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.

As soon as you engage Berge Company Appraisers, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the principles we're known for.