Gutierrez Appraisals provides honest and ethical appraisals for Tulare County

For honest and ethical appraisals, count on Gutierrez Appraisals

We consider what we do as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. So 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 primary obligation is to their client. Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has hired in order to maintain independence. It follows that appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing information to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally should get it from your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, acquiring and maintaining an appropriate 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 Gutierrez Appraisals.

Appraisers can sometimes have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.


	Gutierrez Appraisals has worked hard for its reputation for performing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - something else Gutierrez Appraisals takes very seriously.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Anyone should be able to see that fabricating a property's value to achieve a bigger fee is unethical! This isn't how we operate.

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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value.

With Gutierrez Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.