Curran Appraisals provides honest and ethical appraisals for Le Sueur County

For honest and ethical appraisals, rely on Curran Appraisals

By and large, appraising is a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients. Normally, for a typical 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 brought in to maintain independence. Certain details pertaining to an assignment are to be discussed exclusively with the appraiser's client. So, as a homeowner, if you would like a copy of an appraisal report, you generally should request it from your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other responsibilities include numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, reaching 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 just normal course of business for us at Curran Appraisals.

Appraisers will frequently be required to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Curran Appraisals has an established track record for producing appraisals with the highest of ethics. Contact us today to learn more.


There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - something else Curran Appraisals takes very seriously.

We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Working on assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. 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 an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly states 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 rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

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