Gary Zidell upholds the utmost professional ethics

We think of our job as a profession. 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 called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's main responsibility is to his or her client. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, attaining and keeping a particular 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 Gary Zidell.

Appraisers can regularly have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Gary Zidell you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also 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," "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 objectively determine the home or property value.

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