The Benchmark Group Inc provides honest and ethical appraisals for Pickens County

The Benchmark Group Inc maintains the utmost professional ethics

We think of what we do as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.

An appraiser's primary obligation is to their client. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Consequently, appraisers are privy to a lot of information, 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 generally should obtain it through your lender and not the appraiser.

Other obligations include accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the assignment, reaching and maintaining a certain level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at The Benchmark Group Inc.

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

The Benchmark Group Inc has worked hard for its track record for producing competent and ethically superior appraisals. Contact us today to learn more.


There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at The Benchmark Group Inc you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

The Benchmark Group Inc holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion 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 certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard.

Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also describes 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 working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With The Benchmark Group Inc, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.