Skip Ogle and Associates provides honest and ethical appraisals for Kern County

Skip Ogle and Associates upholds the utmost professional ethics

Generally, appraising is a long term career. 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 unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

The appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client. More often than not, for a standard residential appraisal, 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 a lot of elements relating to an assignment are to be shared with the appraiser's client. As a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you generally should obtain it via your lender.

Other responsibilities include accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the report, attaining and keeping a particular 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 Skip Ogle and Associates.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.


	Skip Ogle and Associates has an established track record for providing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Skip Ogle and Associates you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Doing orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") also states unethical behavior 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 at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Skip Ogle and Associates, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.