Pro Teck Valuation Services [1], a national provider of residential real estate valuations headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Wednesday introduced a quality control solution that allows appraisers and their staff the tools they need to address issues before the appraisal is submitted.
Pro Teck's Intelligent Quality Control solution, unlike other QC systems that identify risk and other issues after the appraisal is submitted, gives appraisers the necessary information to correct any issues with the appraisal before it is delivered.
Whereas Pro Teck's proprietary platform was built from the ground up to eliminate wasteful communication between parties in the appraisal cycle, Pro Teck CEO Tom O'Grady realized that in creating the Intelligent Quality Control solution would involve partnering with Platinum Data's RealView appraisal review tool, which analyzes appraisals against industry guidelines RealView provides numerical scores to an appraisal in the compliance, credibility, and complexity categories as well as overall performance after analyzing the appraisal against industry guidelines and customized appraisal rule review sets.
With the Intelligent Quality Control solution, the RealView appraisal tool is imbedded into Pro Teck's proprietary Appraisal Platform, which gives appraisers the insights they need to address any issues in the appraisal prior to its submission—including hard stops and ensuring that any exceptions or issues identified are explained in the appraiser's commentary.
“We've made the tool appraiser facing and took advantage of some unique functionality that RealView provides, like ranking comps/additional market sales and identifying discrepancies between what is being submitted and prior appraisals or public records on the same property,” O'Grady said.
The Internal Appraisal Review team then uses the RealView information to create a paper trail of issues and resolutions on each appraisal file that can be easily retrieved in the event of an audit or a regulator/investor inquiry--hence the “one-touch appraisal.” The file will include commentary from the Review Staff and the Staff's approval of all exceptions.
“We are able to provide our clients with a QC Summary report, highlighting rule exceptions and flags with appraiser and reviewer explanation, eliminating the costly delays typical of underwriter appraisal disputes and investor pushbacks,” O'Grady said. “Being able to provide a full paper trail of the process is a great advantage for our clients who need to provide this level of transparency and proof to their regulators.”