Appraisal Firewall Enhancements
Scheduled for Friday, July 15th, 2022
Release Information for Administrators

Starting Friday morning, July 15th, 2022, a new version of Appraisal Firewall will be available for you. This release includes pushing edits back to the VA Portal, an enhanced review tool for Appraisal Scorecard, require Intent to Proceed Date, and a handful of more updates! Keep reading for the full description of each new feature coming out this week.

VA Appraisal Order Enhancements

Appraisal Firewall continues to reform the VA appraisal ordering process to ensure appraisals are efficiently managed during the entirety of the order’s life cycle. In this release, Appraisal Firewall will push any edits made to a VA appraisal order back to the VA Portal and import the Appraisal Request Acknowledgement activity during the retrieval process! Users can spend less time between both platforms overseeing the accuracy of their VA appraisal orders.

Editing Details Pushes Changes to VA Portal
When users make edits to a VA appraisal order within Appraisal Firewall, those edits will now be updated appropriately within the Review/Update Case section within the VA Portal. Please note: edits will only be successful in the VA Portal if the fields between Appraisal Firewall and the VA Portal match. Once the edited details have been successfully saved, a notation will be added to the Communications Log. Retrieving the updated 1805 will also reflect the most recent edits made.

How To Use This Feature:
Login to your Appraisal Firewall account and access a VA order. Select Edit Details from the Property Details tab. We have updated the notice at the top of the Edit Details screen to disclose that edits made in Appraisal Firewall will be submitted to the VA Portal. Make the necessary edits as usual and Save at the bottom of the screen.


When the order details have been successfully saved and posted in the VA Portal, the Communications Log will reflect the changes have been saved and posted. For additional information about making edits to a VA appraisal order, refer to ourEditing a VA Appraisal OrderHelp Center article.
Appraisal Request Acknowledged Imported from VA 
We are excited to announce that Appraisal Firewall will now import the Appraisal Request Acknowledged activity directly from the VA Portal! Users can now monitor when their VA appraisal order is recognized and accepted by the VA appraiser, without the necessity of logging into the VA Portal directly to verify if the action has occurred on the Status and History page. Through this added imported activity, users can determine the Due Date from the VA’s schedule sheet, and input the Date Required on their Appraisal Firewall order. You can read more about entering the Date Required field for VA appraisal orders HERE. Now, users can manage an even wider array of their appraisal order types in a single platform.

How To Use This Feature:
This feature is available on new and existing VA appraisal orders. For existing VA appraisal orders, select Retrieve VA Updates. Should the acknowledgement be present at the time of retrieval, Appraisal Firewall will import this activity. The Appraisal Request Acknowledged activity will be posted to the Communications Log.
Scorecard Report Automatically Scans for Bias Terms
Checking for potential bias during the appraisal review process is a topic the industry is presently addressing to ensure borrowers receive a fair and impartial appraisal value. Appraisal Firewall is excited to announce that we have enhanced the Appraisal Scorecard product to scan the appraisal report automatically to meet lenders, investors, and AMC needs to properly track potential bias in appraisal valuation! The new Indicative Words feature allows review teams to create their own list of words that may infer any racial, socioeconomic, etc. bias during the appraiser’s analysis of the subject property that may have altered the perceived value. Through this multi-faceted tool, you can also use the Indicative Words section for catching key terms your organization, underwriters, and/or investors require be present in the appraisal report.

How To Use This Feature:
Login to your global Administrator account, accessing the lender level settings icon in the top left-hand side of the screen. Expand the Automated Review Settings section.



To learn more about creating an Indicative Words list, please refer to ourCreate Indicative Words for Scorecardarticle.



During the Appraisal Scorecard review process, Appraisal Firewall will comb through the appraiser’s XML report delivery, searching for any terms your organization has entered as an Indicative Word. Any terms/phrases matching the Indicative Words list to the delivered report will be displayed in the Indicative Words section within the Appraisal Scorecard report output. For more information on how the Indicative Words list functions with Scorecard, check out our Help Center articleHERE.
Require Intent to Proceed Date on New Orders
Accurate documentation of the date the consumer gave their intent to proceed is important for overall compliance. We are excited to announce that we are adding the Intend to Proceed Date as an available division setting. Once enabled, users will be required to fill out this field on the new order screen. Since regulations state that lenders may not charge or impose a fee on the consumer until they have provided their intent to proceed with the transaction, this new setting will ensure that your users cannot place a new residential order and charge the borrower for the appraisal until there is an Intent to Proceed Date present on the loan.

How To Use This Feature:
Login to your Administrator account, select Relationships, expand the division you want to enable the setting, choose Edit Details, and expand the General section. Under the Placing Orders section, you can enable Require Intent to Proceed (ITP) Date, which will make this field a requirement on the new order screen.
 

 
Once you enable the setting, be sure to select SAVE to retain your changes. Please note this setting is only available for Residential orders. The Intent to Proceed Date is also available to add as a dashboard column, can be an exported field, and an option within the Order Fields section in Custom Reporting.
Switch Bid Request Orders to Manual Assignment
The residential bidding request feature is a great way to send out multiple new order bid requests at once to your panel of eligible appraisers. Occasionally bid requests are slow to trickle in, delaying the overall order timeline. Appraisal Firewall is introducing a way for you to switch the order back to manual assignment or trigger your auto assign panel rotation! Now you can make the switch at your convenience, without any Customer Service intervention.

How To Use This Feature:
This feature is only available on Residential bidding orders. For orders that meet this criterion, you can select the Change To Rotation button located on the Parties tab.  
 

 
An overlay will present you with the option to Manually Assign or Auto-Assign.


For more information about Manually Assigning versus Auto-Assigning, please refer to our Change Residential Bidding Orders to Rotation Help Center article.