Kent Taylor & Associates provides honest and ethical appraisals for Montgomery County

Honesty and Integrity: Kent Taylor & Associates

We think of our business as a profession. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but our primary duty is 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 with the appraiser's client. So, as a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally should request it via your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate figures appropriate to the parameters of the report, acquiring and keeping an adequate level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Kent Taylor & Associates.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty 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.


	Kent Taylor & Associates has an established reputation for performing 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 backup their work files for at least five years - at Kent Taylor & Associates you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When working on an order, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That means we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. Anyone should be able to see that fabricating a property's value to achieve what amounts to a higher fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") also describes 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", 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 get you an accurate home or property value.

As soon as you order an appraisal from Kent Taylor & Associates, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the principles we're known for.