Do not sell, trade, or give nonpublic personal financial information that our clients or their representatives provide about themselves to marketers Direct mail, telephone solicitation, emailing, etc.. The same applies when our client is a lender, accountant, trust administrator, attorney, etc. And they provide nonpublic personal financial information about their client to us.
Appraisal conclusions are considered confidential information. We will not reveal our opinions of the value of the property appraised without prior instruction from the client.
We do not share confidential information with brokers and/ or other appraisers who do not share the specific client-appraiser relationship.
We do not release confidential information furnished by a client and which cannot be obtained from another source that does not require confidentiality.
We do not release non-public personal information i.e., pages from tax returns, Social Security numbers, file numbers, account numbers, or non-real estate business financial statements to anyone, ever. We will publish this type of information in appraisal reports when it is furnished to us in order for us to appraise a property. In this case, the distribution of the report are intended to be limited to our client
While researching the market, you respect the wishes for confidentiality of market participants who are not clients for the assigned mints for which the research is being performed. For example, if the source says that he will share information with us, but wants to keep it confidential: we will not release the identity of the source or the property. We’ll report this information in such a way that neither the source nor the property can be identified.
And spite of the foregoing, our files are required to be open to state regulators and to duty authorized appraisal Institute peer review committees. Pure review committees are bound to keep confidential what ever information they may observe in the file. If required by law or court we must release information-there is no privilege for communications between an appraiser and his client.
Notice to borrowers and homeowners
Although you may have paid a fee for your appraisal even if you paid the appraiser directly the law prohibits the appraiser from providing you with a copy of the appraisal report without consent of the lender.
However, if you paid a fee for the appraisal, you are entitled to a copy of it from your lender.
When an appraisal is performed for a lender, the borrower/homeowner is not entitled to a copy of the appraisal report from the appraiser. This is because the appraisers client is the lender, not the borrower, even though the borrower pays the appraisal fee. A client is defined as the party who directly engages the appraiser to perform the assignment.
The appraiser is required to protect the confidential nature of the appraiser-client relationship, and thus is prohibited by law to provide a copy, or disclose the contents of his or her appraisal report to anyone other than the client. Any licensed appraiser violating this portion of the uniform standards of professional appraisal practice may be subject to disciplinary actions by the office of real estate appraisers.
Although the appraiser cannot provide the borrower with a copy of the appraisal without the clients permission, the borrower has every right to receive a copy of the appraisal from the lender, provided he or she has paid for the appraisal and the loan involves 1-4 unit residential property. According to California business and professions code section 11423, a borrower has up to 90 days after the lender has provided notice of their lending decision to submit a written request for a copy of the appraisal.