CiV
Great question!
Mr. Tipton is correct. We can't have confidentiality if we do not have a client. We don't have a client when some person refuses to place an order with us because we will not tell them what our opinion of value is before we have complied with USPAP. So someone refusing to hire us, over our refusal to break with USPAP, never established an appraiser / client relationship. Even once we have a client, nothing is confidential unless it comes from one of two things.
These two things are:
A) They inform us a certain piece of nonpublic information is confidential, or
B) the piece of information is a result of our having reached an opinion.
Some people attempt to claim confidentiality has been breached simply because a client supplied a borrower a copy of the report, and the borrower passed on a copy to a second lender. Or a wholesale lender's rep calls up yelling, screaming, and threatening about something demanding explanations. I refuse to buy into that vein of thought. We all know that our reporting can be a mix of reporting types from self-contained, summary comments, and restricted comments. As a consequence of this allowed varied reporting, just about any reporting type could contain all three reporting standards within it. Bottom line, often without our work files, and direct personal input regarding our methods, an appraisal report cannot be fully understood. That is why third parties call seeking explanations. Without jurisdictional exception, I am not about to start explaining my work to a third party unless my client wants me to.
Webbed.
P.S. Should a MBer actually have any duty of confidentiality to a borrower, regarding who the borrower is, how to contact them, and the fact they are seeking a loan, that confidentiality does not transfer to other people that have not yet agreed to be employed. Even then, we have contractual confidentiality, not fiduciary confidentiality. Hence, no contract, no duty. But consider my posts at your own risk, none of it is legal advice.
