USPAP

The profession of Appraisal has uniform standards to be followed by all practitioners.  The main guiding doctrine for appraisers is USPAP.  

 

What is USPAP?: The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, (USPAP), is considered the quality control standards applicable for real property, personal property, intangibles, and business valuation appraisal analysis and reports in the United States. USPAP was first developed in the 1980s by a joint committee representing the major U.S. and Canadian appraisal organizations. As a result of the savings and loan crisis, the Appraisal Foundation (TAF) was formed by these same groups, along with support and input from major industry and educational groups, and TAF took over administration of USPAP.

 

USPAP Standards: While USPAP provides a minimum set of quality control standards for the conduct of appraisal in the U.S., it does not attempt to prescribe specific methods to be used. Rather, USPAP simply requires that appraisers be familiar with and correctly utilize those methods which would be acceptable to other appraisers familiar with the assignment at hand and acceptable to the intended users of the appraisal. USPAP directs this through what is called the Scope of Work rule.

 

 

At the onset of an assignment, an appraiser is obligated to gather certain specified preliminary data about the project, such as the nature of the property to be appraised, the basis of value (e.g. market, investment, impaired, unimpaired), the interests appraised (e.g. fee, partial), important assumptions or hypothetical conditions, and the effective date of the valuation. Based on this and other key information, the appraiser relies on peer-reviewed methodology to formulate an acceptable workplan.

 

USPAP Updates:  Since 2006, USPAP has been updated in a 2 year cycle, which begins on January 1 of even number years. The current version of USPAP is available at www.appraisalfoundation.org and has an effective date of January 1, 2010.