Cornerstone Valuations provides honest and ethical appraisals for Volusia County

Cornerstone Valuations maintains the utmost professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult 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. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but our chief duty is to our clients. Normally, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. It follows that 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 review the appraisal document, you normally have to obtain it from your lender and not the appraiser.

Other responsibilities include accurate calculations appropriate to the nature of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is standard operating procedure for us at Cornerstone Valuations.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.

Cornerstone Valuations has an established track record for producing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.


Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Cornerstone Valuations diligently adheres to.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Accepting orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. It should be obvious that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a higher paycheck is unethical! We just don't do it.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice 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 rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

When you engage Cornerstone Valuations, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for.