Honesty and Integrity: Kenneth J. Phillips

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

The appraiser's main responsibility is to his or her client. Generally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including keeping many matters private for their clients a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and sustaining an adequate 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 Kenneth J. Phillips.

Appraisers can regularly have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at Kenneth J. Phillips you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and rules set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We have a responsibility not to do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since raising the value of the home would raise the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper 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 at ease knowing we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Kenneth J. Phillips, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.