Mark C. Harris provides honest and ethical appraisals for Monroe County

Mark Harris maintains the highest professional ethics

What I do is a profession. Requirements to become 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 certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's chief obligation is to their client. Normally, for a standard 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. 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 want to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally should obtain it via your lender.

Other responsibilities include accurate calculations appropriate to the scope of the assignment, attaining and maintaining a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business.

Appraisers will often be required to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. 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 job.

Mark  Harris has an established reputation for completing appraisals with the highest of ethics. Contact us today to learn more.


Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at Mark C. Harris you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When busy with an order, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value with the reward of getting paid more money! This isn't how we operate.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly describes 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 assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you request an appraisal from Mark Harris, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the high ethical standards we're known for.