Honesty and Integrity: NIckey J. Duhon, Real Estate Appraiser

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It's important to know that many elements pertaining to an assignment are to be shared exclusively with the appraiser's client. As a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you normally should request it through your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and keeping a particular level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Here at NIckey J. Duhon, Real Estate Appraiser, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

	NIckey J. Duhon, Real Estate Appraiser has worked hard for its track record for completing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at NIckey J. Duhon, Real Estate Appraiser you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value and then get paid more money! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly defines a violation in ethics 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 diligently 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.

As soon as you engage NIckey J. Duhon, Real Estate Appraiser, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the principles we're known for.