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Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC. provides honest and ethical appraisals for Charleston County

Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC. maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. 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 definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have many obligations as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Generally, for a normal 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 contracted in order to maintain independence. Consequently, appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations controlling with whom we share information. So, as a homeowner, if you desire a copy of the appraisal document, you normally should obtain it via your lender instead of the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate sums appropriate to the nature of the assignment, attaining and sustaining an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC., we take these ethical responsibilities very to heart.

There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC. has worked hard for its track record for performing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.


Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC. you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We only perform to the highest ethical standards possible. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. In other words, we are not able to 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 property's value to achieve a bigger fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly states unethical behavior 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" in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Mat Surles Appraisal Group, LLC., you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.