On a daily - even hourly basis, appraisers are inundated with "request for quote" and other order emails from their AMC & lender clients. Dealing with this influx of emails is a major time sink and quite frankly, a huge annoyance.
We're excited to introduce our latest feature, Client Form. The Client Form allows your existing (and even new clients) to submit appraisal orders via a unique order link. New order requests flow direcly into your Appraisal Inbox and both you and your client receive an email confirmation of the new order submission.
Nobody likes filling out forms, especially appraisers. And in the valuation profession, there's a lot of redundant data entry. At Appraisal Inbox, one of our big goals is to save appraisers time by reducing the amount of double entry and time spent digging through multiple sources of data.
In the lifecycle of an appraisal assignment there are various "to-dos" - tasks that need to be completed. For example, everything from scheduling the inspection, pulling property records, selecting comps, writing the report, delivering it for review and everything in between.
For appraisal teams, manually tracking fee splits and commissions is a time consuming and error-prone process. In the age of the bifurcated appraisal, there might be a primary appraiser, a trainee, a data-entry or research assistant and an internal reviewer on a single assignment.
With the massive growth of web-based business tools over the last decade, the ability to connect your services is more important than ever. Siloed applications that can't communicate with each other are going the way of the dinosaur (as are appraisers who refuse to learn and adopt modern tools).
A typical appraisal assignment often has a number of fees and expenses which need to be tracked. For example, the order might have been engaged at a specific fee. But your client needs the order quicker than usual and is willing to pay an 8% rush charge.
As the cliche goes, communication is key. On your team, you may have several people working on a specific appraisal order. For example, maybe there's someone who schedules and manages the assignment, the licensed appraiser, a trainee or two, an inspector and perhaps even a reviewer.
Keeping your schedule organized is a key part of running a successful appraisal business. Appraisal Inbox has a built-in Schedule featuring agenda and month views that are automatically populated when you set Due and Inspection dates for an appraisal order.
According to the USPAP Record Keeping Rule appraisers must keep a comprehensive and complete Workfile. In the process of an appraisal, appraisers need to collect any number of files and pieces of information to support their value.