CJP Appraisal Services provides honest and ethical appraisals for Cook County

Honesty and Integrity: CJP Appraisal Services

We think of our business as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients. Generally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has brought in to maintain independence. It follows that appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you would like to review an appraisal report, you generally have to get it from your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other responsibilities include accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the report, acquiring and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Here at CJP Appraisal Services, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.


	CJP Appraisal Services has worked hard for its track record for providing appraisals with the highest of ethics. Contact us today to learn more.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at CJP Appraisal Services you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

CJP Appraisal Services holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. It should be obvious that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a bigger paycheck is unethical! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly describes 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 working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With CJP Appraisal Services, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.