Technology Information for Lending Professionals
Updated periodically.
Electronic Commerce with Appraisals
and why you should be using it
Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is simply the exchange of business information by electronic means. In the Appraisal Services field, the electronic exchange can take several forms but the most popular for Lenders and Appraisers is the use of Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format). By converting appraisal documents to PDF format, the Appraiser can send reports and other documents directly to the lender or customer as email, which the recipient can save, print or forward to others. A common practice these days is for Appraisers to upload PDF Appraisal Reports
to a web site where users can access the report from anywhere in the world. The great advantages of all this are the elimination of paper documents between Appraiser and Client, a convenient environment for document storage and retrieval, and speed. Documents that took days to mail now take seconds to email. To open and read the report, all you need is a free Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download and install on your computer from the Internet and use right away.
Receiving and printing PDF reports is easy. If you have a color printer you can print the report (and the photos!) in color. You can always receive and store e-mailed appraisal reports in your email software (such as Outlook or Eudora) or you can open the attachment that contains the report and store it separately as a file in your computer. If you use a web based email service (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) be sure that you have a large enough mailbox to both receive and store your documents. Be sure to clean out your mailbox regularly. A full mailbox on a web based email system will typically cause all subsequent emails to bounce back to their senders until there is enough space to receive and store them.
VA e-Appraisal System
The Department of Veterans Affairs now uses its e-Appraisal System to manage, store and distribute appraisals. VA Appraisers
now upload their reports to the repository where requesters can access them. Requesters set up a user name and password account and access the Appraisal Report using the VA case number. The Appraisal Reports are stored as Adobe PDF files.
This new way of doing things means that Appraisers no longer email appraisals to lenders. Once the appraiser has uploaded the report to VA, the new system notifies the requester that the Appraisal has arrived. In Liquidation cases, the requester is notified that VA will begin processing the Appraisal. When the requester is ready to access the appraisal, they go online to the Veterans Information Portal to log in and download their report..
When an Appraisal requires a correction or additional documentation, the Appraiser uploads the Revised Appraisal Report
as a complete new Appraisal package to VA and the e-Appraisal System again notifies the requester that the Appraisal has arrived.
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