1. Member States shall ensure that reliable standards for the valuation of residential immovable property for mortgage lending purposes are developed within their territory. Member States shall require creditors to ensure that those standards are used where they carry out a property valuation or to take reasonable steps to ensure that those standards are applied where a valuation is conducted by a third party. Where national authorities are responsible for regulating independent appraisers who carry out property valuations they shall ensure that they comply with the national rules that are in place.
2. Member States shall ensure that internal and external appraisers conducting property valuations are professionally competent and sufficiently independent from the credit underwriting process so that they can provide an impartial and objective valuation, which shall be documented in a durable medium and of which a record shall be kept by the creditor.