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December 15, 2003
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- a la mode’s Mercury Network, an appraisal workflow and transaction management hub connecting real estate appraisers and their mortgage lender clients, reached an important milestone this month. More than 20,000 lender representatives are now registered Network users doing business with Mercury-enabled appraisers.
These 20,000-plus lenders find an appraiser in their subject property’s area. They choose based on criteria that are important to them, which may include coverage area, turnaround time, fees, licensure, E&O insurance, experience and expertise.
The lender logs in and inputs subject property information – once – and the particulars of the assignment. The order is routed to the Mercury-enabled appraiser, who completes the assignment and delivers it through Mercury Network servers. In between, Mercury provides instant, on-demand updates on the assignment’s progress, eliminating phone and fax tag.
The Mercury Network is free for these 20,000-plus lenders and the appraisers they work with. Mercury Network servers delivered more than 15 million electronic appraisals in 2003.
"The Mercury Network has become the industry’s standard for paperless mortgage transactions," said Dave Biggers, founder and CEO of a la mode, inc. "There are five thousand appraiser directories lenders could use, if all they wanted to do was ‘appraiser shop.’ Mercury Network lenders are ready to do business and are serious about leveraging technology to streamline the appraisal process."
While the Mercury Network is in part a directory of appraisers, covering every county of every state in America, the 20,000 lender figure does not include those loan officers and brokers who find an appraiser in their subject property’s area on the Mercury Network and phone or fax orders – which would make the number of lender-side Mercury users much larger.
But the 20,000-plus lenders who take full advantage of Mercury’s workflow management capabilities are saving time and money, Biggers noted. "Welcoming our 20,000th lender-user is testament to the usefulness and ease of use of the Mercury Network," he said. "That’s 20,000 appraisal clients who, every day, find qualified appraisers on Mercury and work with them without having to resort to phone and fax tag."
In addition, because Mercury appraisers do not share their fee with a middleman, they are likely to consider Mercury clients a priority over assignments where the fee is split with a third party, Biggers said.
Sixty-three percent of registered Mercury lender-side users describe themselves as mortgage brokers, while 37 percent say they work directly for lenders.
To learn more about the Mercury Network and its newest release, version 3.0, and to search the Network’s participating appraisers in any county in the United States for free, go to http://www.alamode.com/mercury.
More information on the company can be found on the Web at http://www.alamode.com. |