Appraisal Firewall Release Information for
Thursday, April 5th, 2018

Starting Thursday morning, April 5th, an enhanced version of Appraisal Firewall will be available to you and your managed users.  With this release, we will be adding multiple enhancements to the commercial order process, creating lender level manual reviewers, and more. Read below for complete detail.


Increased Demand for Commercial Appraisals Prompts System Expansion
As commercial lending increases in 2018, our newly expanded system gives you more control over your commercial appraisal process.  Appraisal Firewall allows you to customize your commercial workflow to best suit the needs of your company.  We’ve enhanced the commercial ordering process, from order bidding to easier communication with users and appraisers. Whether you are looking for a commercial ordering solution, or if you want to improve your existing process, here are just some of the enhancements.
  • New Commercial Appraisal Products and More Detailed Ordering Screens
    We’ve enhanced the commercial appraisal order screen to include a new product called Appraisal Report, which is a standard product name that’s accepted by USPAP.  We have also added an additional data entry field for Property Interest which helps transmit more information to commercial appraisers up front.

    How to Use this Feature
    Both the Appraisal Report product and the Property Interest field are available by default on the new commercial appraisal order screen with this release.  There is nothing you need to do to enable these enhancements.
  • New Commercial Settings Allows You to Customize Your Process
    We understand that commercial appraisal orders are never standard from lender to lender, which is why we have created a new Commercial Settings feature.  Within the settings of a division, the new Commercial section allows you to enable features to help improve your commercial workflow.  Click here to review the enhanced Commercial Appraisal training guide for lenders.
     
    • Auto-Request Bids – Forget manually selecting appraisers to request bids from!  Now you can automatically send a bid request email to all qualified appraisers on your panel right when you place the order. 
    • Allow Managed Users to Review Bids – Managed users can now review and accept bids from appraisers!  Previously, this feature was only available to administrator users.
    • Allow Conditional Acceptance – You can allow appraisers to conditionally accept commercial orders due to a change of price or turn time that may have occurred since the time the bid was originally submitted. 
    • Set Bid By Date Out _ Business Days – Set an automatic due date for the appraisers’ bids to be submitted by on commercial orders.
    • Use Standard Engagement Terms – You can supply a default engagement letter that applies only to your commercial orders. 
  • Commercial-Specific Coverage Areas for Your Appraisers
    With the addition of several new commercial features for lenders, we didn’t want to leave out your appraisers!  We have enhanced appraiser accounts to be able to designate their commercial coverage in addition to the already available residential coverage.  Now whenever you view the profile information for a commercial appraiser, you have the ability to view their commercial coverage separate from their residential coverage to help ensure you have the commercial coverage you need. 

Other Enhancements with this Release…

  • New HUD Compliance Inspection Report Product Type
    The new 92051 HUD Compliance Inspection Report will be available with this release. The form is required for FHA construction reinspections and is different from a normal FHA 1004D. Now users across the board will be able to order the new product.

    How to use this feature:
    The new 92051 HUD Compliance Inspection Report will be automatically available to you and all your managed users who can place orders.  If you limit the products that your users can place orders for, you will need to adjust your products if you do not want users placing orders for the new 92051 form as it will be automatically available to everyone.  In addition, if you use fixed pricing, you may want to enter a cost for the new product. 
  • New UCDP/EAD Override Available: 1004D
    While we have offered the ability to select manual overrides for UCDP/EAD eligible reports for some time, we are expanding this feature to include 1004Ds. Now that the portals except 1004D XML submissions, the manual overrides will now be available for you to select when overriding a UCDP/EAD hard stop.

    How to use this feature:
    Override selections for 1004Ds will automatically be available on the Send to UCDP screen just like they already are on other UCDP/EAD eligible form types. If a portal returns an overridable error, you can access the Send to UCDP screen, select the override reason from the drop down, then submit the report again.
  • Update to Average Price Per Product Management Report
    We are enhancing the current management report called All Appraisers Average Price Per Product to include a new column for FHA appraisals. Now you can easily see the average cost of both conventional and FHA orders anywhere across the country. You can use this feature to gauge the appropriate fixed pricing for a given area.

    How to use this feature:
    You can access the All Appraisers Average Price Per Product report via the Reporting section.  You can optionally select a state and county then click Run Report.  The report will automatically display a new column labeled ‘Average Amount FHA’ so you can see the average pricing for an FHA product from appraisers throughout the system.
  • Enhancement to Manual Review Allows for Global Reviewers
    We have enhanced the manual review process to allow a lender level reviewer. Now, instead of adding a manual reviewer at the division level, you can optionally add a manual review panel at the lender level that can perform reviews across multiple divisions. In addition, system users who are acting as reviewers will have a new reviewer user indicator within a user list so you can easily identify which users are reviewers.

    How to use this feature:
    Access your company’s account settings by clicking the gear in the upper left hand side of your screen. Maximize the section for Manual Review Settings and scroll to the Review Panel section.  Here you can Create New Panel or Invite Reviewer to an existing panel.  You can keep adding reviewers just like you already do at the division level.  Next, click Push To Divisions and select the appropriate divisions that this review panel should be applied to.  When you click Save Changes, confirm the change to have the lender level review panel copied to all selected divisions.  Please note: Pushing a lender level manual review panel overrides the review panel of ALL the selected divisions.  After creating a lender level manual review panel you can customize the review panel on a per division basis.