Kunz Appraisals provides honest and ethical appraisals for Wharton County

Honesty and Integrity: Kunz Appraisals

Generally, appraising is a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days 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.

An appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client. Most of the time, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It follows that appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus many rules and regulations that must be followed. As a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to get it via your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate calculations appropriate to the parameters of the report, acquiring and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at Kunz Appraisals.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are clearly 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.


	Kunz Appraisals has worked hard for its reputation for providing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - something else Kunz Appraisals diligently adheres to.

Kunz Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve essentially a bigger paycheck is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") also states 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you order an appraisal from Kunz Appraisals, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.