Rocky Mountain Valuation Services provides honest and ethical appraisals for Eagle County

Rocky Mountain Valuation Services upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we are bound by ethical considerations.

We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers, but our primary 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. 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 normally have to obtain it through your lender.

Other responsibilities include numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Rocky Mountain Valuation Services.

Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.


	Rocky Mountain Valuation Services has an established reputation 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 be able to produce their work files for at least five years - something else Rocky Mountain Valuation Services diligently adheres to.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Working on orders based on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a higher fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly defines unethical behavior 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 request an appraisal from Rocky Mountain Valuation Services, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.