As a companion piece to our Commercial order bidding process, we have expanded the bid request functionality to include Residential orders. When Residential Bidding is enabled, you can request bids from multiple appraisers at a time. The appraisers you select can supply a turn time and price, and you can accept the bid that best meets your needs and deadlines. This guide will establish how to enable the function, how bidding orders correspond with your origination process, what the feature looks like on an order, and more.


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How to Enable Residential Bidding

The Residential Bidding feature takes the logic behind the Commercial order requesting bids process and merges it with the traditional Residential round-robin panel rotation. To enable Residential Bidding, access Relationships, chose a Division, select Edit Settings, and expand the General section.



The first section relates to settings pertaining to the Placing Orders process. Enable the box adjacent to Allow Bid Requests.



Once you enable Allow Bid Requests, this feature will allow appraisers to supply a bid with a turn time and fee cost. Pick the winning bid to assign the order. You can choose to request bids when you place an order, or switch to a bidding process after the order is created. Three additional sub-settings will populate after Allow Bid Requests has been enabled.


  • Require Bidding – This setting will automatically mark the Request Bid feature on the new order screen, ensuring Residential orders at the time of placement are marked as 'bidding.' Once this setting is enabled, Supervisors and Originators will not be able to edit this field.  


  • Restrict Bid Requests to Administrators Only – By default, all users can choose to request bids when ‘Allow Bid Requests’ is enabled. Enable this additional feature to only have it available to administrator users and suppressed for supervisors and originators.


  • Auto-Request Bids – By default, administrator users need to manually select which appraisers to request bids from. With the ‘Auto-Request Bids’ feature enabled, whenever a user places a bidding order, the system will automatically request bids from all eligible appraisers on your appraiser panel.


  • Allow Managed Users to Review Bids – By default, only administrator users can view and accept a bid. Enable this checkbox to allow supervisor and originator users to be able to view and accept appraiser bids. Appraiser name and contact information is still suppressed from managed users with this feature enabled.

 

These sub-settings provide additional refinement for your origination process but are not required to utilize the Residential Bidding feature. 


Request Bid on Order Placement

Once the Residential Bidding feature has been enabled, you can utilize the function on New Order placement. Choose Residential from the New Order menu option. The bid request can be found towards the bottom right-hand side under the Order section on the New Order screen. To ensure the order is placed as a Residential Bidding order, enable the Request Bid box, and enter a date. This is the date you want your appraisers to submit their bids. 



After you have fulfilled all the required fields, select Order at the bottom of the screen.


How to Request Bids

Upon order placement, you will be directed to the Communication Log. A system generated notice will state the order has been placed as Residential Bidding. 


Select the Parties tab to locate the Assign Appraiser button. 



Like manual assignment with a non-bidding residential order, a list of eligible appraisers will be displayed. Enable the Request Bid option for any appraisers you would like to send a bid request. 



Once you have selected the appraisers you would like to receive bids, select the Request Bids button located at the bottom right. Please note at least one Request Bid must be selected from your eligible list of appraisers to have the Request Bids button available.



The Communication Log will show each bid request sent out to an appraiser, reflected as Bid Request to Appraiser 1, etc. The following screenshot is from an Administrator’s account, which is why the appraiser’s name is visible. 



For compliancy purposes, managed users will still be able to see the Bid Request sent to the appraisers, but the appraiser information will continue to be hidden. The following screenshot is from a managed user’s account, where only Appraiser 1, 2, etc. is displayed. 



Changing the Bid Due By Date

Occasionally, extending your bid due by date is necessary to give your appraisers more time to submit their bids. To edit the bid due by date, select the Review Bids button. Towards the top right, the Reply with bid by: will be displayed. Click on the pencil icon to edit the date.



The calendar will display so you can adjust the date accordingly.



Once you have selected the desired date, select the green arrow adjacent to the new date displayed in the Reply with bid by: field.



After the new date has been saved, the Communication Log will log the activity and trigger email notifications to the appraisers that the bid due by date has been changed.



Reviewing Bids as an Administrator

As appraisers submit and decline bids, you will continue to receive Bid Received email notifications. Additionally, if all the appraisers you requested bids from respond, you will also continue to receive the Bids All In email notification.


From the Communication Log, select Review Bids.



The list of appraisers you requested bids from will be displayed, along with the bid request status. Bidding statuses will be one of the following:


  • Pending – The appraiser has yet to submit or decline a bid.
  • Accept – The appraiser has provided a bid with an amount and turn time.
  • Declined – The appraiser has declined to provide a bid.
  • Expired – The appraiser did not provide a bid in the allotted timeframe.


Appraiser information can be viewed by expanding the arrow to the left. This allows you to see the name of the appraiser that provided the bid, corresponding with the number assigned on the initial bid request.



Based on the bid submissions you receive; you can award the bid to the appraiser by selecting Accept.



The Review Bid screen will show you the appraiser that has been awarded the bid, the fee, turn time, and appraiser information. Select Accept to complete the order assignment or Cancel to return to the initial Review Bids screen.



A New Request email will be sent to the appraiser awarded the bid, while the appraisers that were not awarded the bid will receive a Bid Cancelled email notification. The Communication Log will reflect the aforementioned activities, along with the appraiser whose bid was approved. Additionally, the order status will update to ‘assigned.’



Reviewing Bids as a Managed User

If your division has Allow Managed Users to Review Bids enabled, managed users will have access to the Review Bids button, just like Administrator users. Below is an example of the Review Bids screen by a managed user.



Managed users can track bid submissions, just like Administrators, and accept an appropriate bid via the Accept button. To remain complaint, managed users will not have access to appraiser information via the Review Bids screen or when accepting a bid. Please see the screenshots below as examples. Note that appraiser information will continue to be visible to Administrators. 





Auto-Request Bids on Order Placement

Enabling the Auto-Request Bids feature can assist in expediting the bid request process. Instead of manually requesting bids, the system will automatically request bids from all eligible appraisers on your panel, bypassing requesting bids on the Assign Appraiser screen. Order placement will be the same, requiring you and your users to enable the Request Bids option within the Order section on the New Order screen, including bid due by date, to mark the order as ‘bidding.’



Upon successful order placement, the Communication Log will show the number of bid requests sent out to your eligible appraisers.



Reviewing bids will follow the same process. Please refer to Reviewing Bids as an Administrator for more information.


Change Residential Order to Bidding

When you enable the Allow Bid Requests feature on your division, traditionally placed residential orders can be changed to bidding. This can be advantageous if you need to cast a wider net to get your order assigned quicker. To change a normal residential order assignment to bidding, select the Parties tab, and choose the Change to Bidding option on the right.



On the Change to Bidding screen, you will need to enter a Bid Due By date. Once the date has been entered, select Confirm. If you select Cancel, you will be directed back to the Communications Log.



The Communication Log will note the order has been changed to bidding to aid in tracking purposes.



Once the order has been switched to bidding, requesting, reviewing, accepting bids will follow the same process as described in this guide.


Change Residential Bidding Order to Rotation

Residential orders that have been placed or changed to bidding orders can be altered to remove the bidding process changing the order back to the rotation process. From the Parties tab, select Change to Rotation. 



An overlay will appear asking which type of rotation you would like to place the order in: Manually Assign or Auto-Assign Appraiser. 



Choosing Manually Assign will allow you to select an individual appraiser, eligible for assignment from your panel. The Assign Appraiser button will be immediately available, so you can assign the order without further delay. Selecting Auto-Assign will trigger the order to rotate through your panel of appraisers, beginning with the next appraiser up in the rotation.  If Close is selected, the user will be taken back to the Parties tab. 


Once the change to rotation selection has been implemented, bid cancelled notifications will be sent to all appraisers that were initially sent a bid request. All order activities will align with the selected assignment at the time of the rotation change.