At a recent conference, the topic of revisions and conditions came up. So many loans are lost every year due to the untimely handling of revisions and conditions. This is a huge problem in our industry, not to mention how silly it is to lose months of hard work over improper phrasing or a typo in a report.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this topic here is a quick break down:
The appraiser fills out an appraisal report and sends it to the lender. Then the lender’s underwriter goes through the report and requests changes or corrections; we call these revisions and conditions for the report. It comes back to the appraisal management company and we ask the appraiser to make the changes. The loan cannot be funded if the there is a mistake on the report, no matter how small, or if the report is not filed on time. Most of the time the appraisers have already been paid for their work on the report, so they are in no rush to complete it and are busy working on new orders.
I was given a huge shout-out at this same aforementioned conference recently by someone who said that when my company is involved this is not an issue. It is not like I don’t face these problems, but I move to resolve them very quickly. I would love to share a few tips to streamline the revision and conditions process.
Be Direct: Communication is key. Since I am the middleman (or woman) between the appraisers and the underwriters, I often see that miscommunication is the root of many problems. I had a problem recently where the underwriter was asking for the number of rooms to be changed on the report because it was written as a different number in two separate portions in the report. The appraiser didn’t understand this and continued to insist that he wrote the correct number. This could have been solved in half the time had the underwriter been more specific, either by copy and pasting the two portions or just giving page numbers of where the two different numbers were written.
Be Polite and Empathetic: This seems obvious but stress causes people to become irritated and politeness goes out the window. Appraisers sometimes don’t realize how long the lender has been working on this loan and how much it takes to put a loan together. Lenders feel the weight of the report expiration and begin to lose their patience with appraisers.
Reports are a Priority: I choose my appraisers based on how the appraiser deals with us. Whether they do their job in a timely manor and if they treat it with the same level of importance, even after they have been paid. I understand that it is frustrating to go back to an old order but if you understand what the lender needs, ultimately everything will run more smoothly.
Create an Addendum: Each appraiser writes their report differently but underwriters are trained to look for certain phrases. If the appraiser writes this information in the report in a way in which it is unclear to the underwriter or in an unusual place, the report will be sent back. I have observed many appraisers who create a one-page addendum at the beginning or end of the report that has all of the correct phrases and information that the underwriter will be looking for in one place. This makes the information so easy and accessible and saves so much time.
Take Your Time: As an underwriter it is your job to read the report thoroughly. I would say most of the time the information you need is there, it is just written in a different area of the report. When reports with correct information are sent back it frustrates the appraiser and makes them feel as though no one took the time to read the report they spent hours working on.
I hope these ideas are helpful and, of course, if you have more ideas to share to help us expedite this process, please share them in our comments below.