The way Reggora CEO Brian Zitin sees it, the appraisal industry is beyond ready for technological innovation.
Appraisals, he says, are obviously necessary to the home sales process. But the way they work right now is tedious, slow, unsophisticated and cumbersome — and it might be getting worse.
“Appraisers are leaving the industry, and so we’ve got this big logistics problem,” explained Zitin. “We’re in 2020 and 2021 — we have insane mortgage volume, but less appraisers. Everyone is experiencing much longer turn times on their appraisals. And everyone is looking for pretty much anything to help them improve that outcome, because the slower the appraisal, the worse the borrower experience, obviously.”
That, Zitin said, is where his company comes in. Reggora, co-founded by former Boston University roommates Zitin and Will Denslow, has created an appraisal management platform for lenders and appraisal vendors that Zitin calls “the Uber of the appraisal business.” Reggora’s software suite combines a modern user experience, algorithmic appraisal ordering and efficient payment processing to allocate appraisal orders effectively and condense a process that has, traditionally, sometimes taken weeks into turn times of 48 hours.
It’s an evolution that Zitin said has been long due.
“Appraisal has always been pretty terrible in terms of technology,” said Zitin. “In terms of tech, mortgage is already not super sexy, and appraisal is probably one of the least sexy categories within mortgage. There hasn’t been a ton of change in innovation that’s happened.
“But for our technology, the definitive North Star that we put out is that we want to ultimately deliver two-day appraisals to the industry. We want to help deliver that kind of more Uber-style experience to the appraisal process in an effort to make everyone’s lives easier. I think we’re definitely putting a dent in the general genre of appraisal and the headache that it causes today.”
One of the key ways Reggora eliminates those headaches, Zitin said, is by simple digital automation, saving time by putting raw computing power to work.
“We’re automating lots of manual tasks,” said Zitin. “We’ve worked with some lenders where sometimes we save 20 minutes a file in terms of manual tasks, sometimes more. If a lender is doing 10,000 orders a year and they’re saving 20 minutes on each of those, that really starts to add up pretty significantly. At the same time, not only is it just about improving the actual turn time to the appraisal, but also making the actual employees more efficient in terms of their day-to-day tasks. So if it took, as just an example, 10 people to manage your appraisal process, [with Reggora] you might be able to do it with less — or at least have those people be able to handle much more volume than they would without this sort of technology.”
Suzanne Hawkins, collateral department manager for Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, can personally attest to the added efficiency Reggora’s platform brings.
“It saves so much time,” Hawkins said. “I had actually implemented a previous platform for the company before we went to Reggora’s, and it was day and night. [Using Reggora’s platform] takes seconds, as opposed to before when you had to pull the information from [the previous suite] yourself and physically manually enter it. … And once the appraisals are delivered, they’re automatically uploaded into our loan files. We don’t even have to do that anymore, which we used to have to deal with and actually takes quite a bit of time. They send emails out to our borrowers to let them know that the appraisal is there and that they can download a copy electronically. It’s very efficient and very seamless.”
Jodi Hall, president of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, added that the inclusion of a full-featured accounting dashboard is a feature that separates Reggora’s offering from similar products.
“It reconciles if appraisals have been paid or not been paid for,” Hall said. “Being in the mortgage industry for so long, I haven’t seen a mortgage company that doesn’t constantly have an [appraisal management company] saying, ‘You owe me money.’ Mortgage companies are constantly trying to reconcile closed loan files and payments. It’s typically a full-time job of at least one individual in the accounting department to be able to handle the payment processing and reconciliation of whether or not an appraisal was or was not paid for upfront in the process. The amount of time and overhead savings by them having the accounting feature is tremendous. Other companies, they’ll offer the payment, they’ll offer the payment processing, but they don’t have a robust accounting feature to streamline the reconciliation process that also integrates so well with your [loan origination software].”
Smooth integration, Zitin said, was vital in Reggora’s product development.
“One of the key things for any mortgage tech provider,” said Zitin, “is being able to play nice in the sandbox with the rest of the technology stack. … What we’ve brought a lot of modern innovation to to improve that user experience is through a really modern, open API (the connection between two software programs, such as appraisal management software and the rest of a lender’s origination suite).
“With core systems of the lenders like the loan origination system and the point-of-sale system, [Reggora integrates] really deeply to do a lot of cool things, like automatically ordering an appraisal, providing that kind of ‘Domino’s pizza tracker’ of the appraisal status, and a whole lot of other things like that.”
And with the state and nature of the appraisal industry under such a recent spotlight, Zitin said that using technology to adapt is important for forward-thinking lenders to succeed.
“Not only is it important, it’s going to be necessary for survival,” he said. “If you look at it, a lot of the changes are happening, especially stuff that came out of COVID. The FHFA put out a [request for input] for the modernization of the appraisal process. … If you’re not working with modern technology providers to be able to pivot appropriately in terms of what the GSEs and the regulators are going to be rolling out in terms of changes, you’re literally going to be left behind as a lender.
“The time is now, because these regulations, we don’t know exactly when they’re going to change, but if it’s happening within the next year or two, everyone’s going to be scrambling unless you’re prepared now. It’s extremely, extremely important.”
