Honesty and Integrity: Wendi Herda

By and large, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

As appraisers our chief responsibility is to his or her client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you generally have to request it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and maintaining an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at Wendi Herda.

Appraisers may regularly have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Wendi Herda takes very seriously.

Wendi Herda holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest no-no, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would increase the their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unprofessional practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior 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 confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Wendi Herda, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, honest service.