Bernabe & Barnett provides honest and ethical appraisals for Forsyth County

Bernabe & Barnett upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Consequently, appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to get it through your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other obligations include numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Bernabe & Barnett.

Appraisers can frequently have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Bernabe & Barnett has worked hard for its track record for completing appraisals with the highest of ethics. To learn more, contact us.


Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Bernabe & Barnett takes very seriously.

We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Accepting orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That is, we can'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 home's value to achieve a higher paycheck is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly states 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 assured we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Bernabe & Barnett, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.