As a manual reviewer, you will periodically be assigned real estate appraisals to review for quality assurance and accuracy. Use this guide to become familiar with the manual review experience.


Reviewing an Appraisal

When you first login as a reviewer, all the orders that you are assigned as the reviewer on will be shown on the Review tab.



The Review tab will look something like this.



When you are assigned an order to review, you will receive a system email notifying you that you have a file to review. You can either click the HERE link in the email, or login to the system and move to the Review tab.


Any orders that are in a status of Manual Review are those that need your attention. To begin the review process, click on an order listed here to open it.


The order opens into the Communications tab where you will have access to the PDF and the XML formats of the appraisal.



The actual appraisal file review process will more than likely be performed outside of the system. You can click these files to download them locally to either work with the PDF or the XML file. You will also probably want to review the Communications tab to ensure that all the back-and-forth messages between the appraiser and lender comply with appraisal independence regulations, as well as the property information, payment information, and any other notes that were left on the Notes tab.



Use these tabs to review detailed information that is within the system and compare it to the data that is in the appraisal file.


Once you have reviewed the appraisal, you will choose to either Approve or Reject the appraisal.


Approving an Appraisal

When you are completed with your review and have decided to approve the quality of the appraisal, click the Approve/Reject button. The Approve/Reject screen opens.



To begin the approval process, make sure that the Approve radio button is enabled. Then, select an Appraisal Rating from the drop-down list.



If you are approving this appraisal, you will more than likely choose a rating of 3, 4, or 5.


Then enable the Delivery box. This ensures that the appraisal will be delivered and made available to the lender users that are assigned to this order.


Important Note: it is possible that the lender is setup with multiple review panels. If this is the case, on this screen you will see two additional options: Send Appraisal to Next Reviewer and Send Final Appraisal to Lender. See the "Working with Review Assignments when the Lender has Multiple Review Panels" section for more detail.


If your account manager has provided dispositions for you to choose from, you will need to select one prior to approving the appraisal report. Dispositions are general statements describing the appraisal. Click the Select a Disposition (Required) to choose one.



To see what a Disposition says, click the Expand Description link.



The disposition will then be added to this reviewed file as a note in the Communications Log. The approval dispositions are for tracking/reporting purposes for the lender and reviewer only. Dispositions are not viewable to the appraiser.


You can optionally type a message into the text box to communicate with the lender. Note that the message you type here is not shown to the appraiser.


If you have a separate review checklist that you want to include, you can add that as an attachment here as well.


When you are done with your review and are ready to send it to the lender, click the Submit button. This completes the manual review process for approving the appraisal.



You will then be taken back to the Communications tab where you can view the results of your review.



Rejecting an Appraisal

When you are completed with your review and have decided to reject the appraisal, click the Approve/Reject button. The Approve/Reject screen opens. You will want to check the Reject checkbox.



When you select the Reject option, the Appraisal Rating and Disposition options may go away. You will not need to set a Rating on rejections. If your account manager has provided dispositions for you to choose from, you will need to select one prior to rejecting the appraisal report. Dispositions are general statements describing the appraisal. Click the Select a Disposition (Required) to select one.



To see what a Disposition says, click the Expand Description link.



When you select a disposition, it will be added to this reviewed file as a note in the Communications Log, but will not be viewable to the appraiser. Rejection dispositions are for tracking/reporting purposes for the lender and reviewer only.


You must type a message into the text area to communicate the review issue to the appraiser. Note that the message to the appraiser is required.


If you have a separate document that you want to include for the appraiser, you can add that as an attachment here as well.


When you are done with your review and are ready to send it back to the appraiser for corrections, click the Submit button. The appraiser will be sent a copy of your notes and any attachments or review checklists that you uploaded to this message.



The appraisal will move to a Corrections Required status until the appraiser re-delivers an appraisal for you to review to ensure that they made the changes you identified.


If you reject an appraisal and send it to the appraiser for correction, you will always be the reviewer who receives the corrections from the appraiser upon re-delivery.



Once you submit your rejection, you will be taken to the Communications tab. The details of your review will be shown here in the Communications log.


Working with Review Assignments when the Lender has Multiple Review Panels

It may be the case that the lender company you are reviewing appraisals for is setup with more than one reviewer panel.


If this is the case, when you go to Approve an appraisal, you can choose to send it on to the next reviewer in line or send it directly to the lender that placed the order.




  • Send appraisal to next reviewer - select this option to have another reviewer double check your work per lender policy.


  • Send final appraisal to lender - select this option to complete the manual review process and send the appraisal to the lender.


If you are rejecting an appraisal and the lender has multiple reviewer panels, when you go to Reject an appraisal, you can choose to send it on to the next reviewer in line or send it directly to the appraiser for corrections.



  • Send appraisal to next reviewer - select this option to have another reviewer double check your work per lender policy.


  • Send final appraisal to lender - select this option to complete the manual review process and send the appraisal to the lender.


Admin Reviewers

If your lender sets you up as an Admin Reviewer, you can see all of the other reviewers in your panel's review assignments. Lender Admin Reviewers can reassign review assignments to other reviewers on their same panel, as well as approve/reject reviews on behalf of another review.


When you login and move to the Review tab, as an Admin Reviewer you can change the scope, or what you can see, on this tab. Select the Review Scope drop down and change this to Unassigned Orders or All Orders. The default is My Orders - this shows you only those orders assigned to you.


  • My Orders - those orders assigned to you.


  • Unassigned Orders - orders that should be manually assigned to a reviewer by an Admin Reviewer.


  • All Orders - those orders assigned to any reviewer in your panel.



When you select All Orders, you can see the reviewer currently assigned to the order from the Reviewer column. If you are an appraiser Admin Reviewer, this column is not displayed. You will need to open the order and view the Parties tab to see the currently assigned Reviewer.



Assigning Unassigned Orders / Reassigning an Assignment to a Different Reviewer

The process of assigning an unassigned review order to a reviewer and to reassign an existing assignment to a different reviewer is much the same. Note that you can also reassign your own review orders to a different review on your panel if you like. Follow these instructions.


On the Review tab, locate the order you want to assign/reassign by selecting from the Review Scope drop-down, then click it to open it. You will be taken to the Communications tab. Move to the Parties tab (person icon).



On the Parties tab, click the Assign Reviewer button. This screen shows an example of how the Parties tab looks when assign an order that is currently unassigned to a reviewer.



Here is how the Parties tab looks when you are reassigning currently assigned order to a different reviewer - it will show the currently assigned Reviewer information.



No matter if the order is currently assigned or not, you will always click the Assign Reviewer button to assign a new or different reviewer to the order. The Assign Reviewer tab opens and shows you the list of reviewers that you can assign reviewer responsibilities.



Find a reviewer from the Reviewers list and click the corresponding Assign button. In this example, we will assign the reviewer "Laura Supervisor" to be the reviewer on the order. The order will then be assigned to your selected reviewer, and you will be taken back to the Communications tab where you can review the actions that the system took to assign the reviewer.



As you can see, the reviewer "Sally Secure" was removed from the order and was sent a system notification letting her know. The reviewer "Laura Supervisor" was added to the order and was sent a system notification letting her know.