Get To Know Us
Our Mission
To always provide superior mortgage technology to the financial services industry
Appraisal Firewall is the story of a software company dedicated to providing relationship-based services to the mortgage industry for more than 25 years.
From our company’s inception in 1989, our focus has been to promote relationships between service providers and financial institutions.
Appraisal Firewall was developed in direct response to HVCC so that lenders could still work with their local appraisers without going through a management company. The Dodd-Frank Act replaced HVCC and Appraisal Firewall has continued to help lenders of all sizes cope with the ever-changing regulatory landscape.
Today, millions of appraisals go through Appraisal Firewall in a safe, compliant environment that encourages local relationships. We will continue to develop the technology to further enhance everyone’s lending experience while minimizing the challenges posed by the changing regulatory environment. For more information about SharperLending LLC, the company behind Appraisal Firewall, please check us out here.
History of Appraisal Firewall
Appraisal Firewall was created in 2006 as platform for lenders to manage their appraisal process
2006
Appraisal management software concept breaks out of bundled services platform. Appraisal Firewall is born.
2008
Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) severs relationship between commissioned lender employees and appraisers.
2010
Dodd-Frank Act sunsets HVCC. Appraisal Firewall grows 110%.
2017
Appraisal Firewall continually grows between 28%-50% year after year, and averages over 20,000 completed appraisals per month in 2017
2018
Appraisal Firewall invents and releases Verisite, the first-of-its-kind mobile appraisal and property inspection software
Matt Brannon
Director of Operations
Matt Brannon has been with SharperLending in excess of 20 years, helping develop and drive strategic business goals for the company’s origination products. Matt’s background is in communication, and he believes that clarity of information between departments is key moving complex financial technology forward. Matt has extensive knowledge of all the company’s origination products, including appraisal software, mortgage credit reporting platforms, income verification solutions, risk management, and other settlement services solutions that the company offers.
Matt enjoys time with his wife and two daughters, fishing, writing, anything outdoors, and listening to his dad’s Vietnam war stories.
Alex Barrett
Director of Development
Alex Barrett is a software developer and development team director with a wide variety of experience in software. Graduating from EWU with a degree in web and multimedia programming, Alex began his career as an entry-level developer and has most recently run SaaS companies with thousands of daily users and several Fortune 500 clients.
Alex has experience in creating a wide variety of software from web and mobile gaming to military data processing systems and medical patient and provider tools.
Alex and his wife Allison live in Post Falls, Idaho with their three daughters. On weekends during the summer they can often be found camping and hiking and in the colder months Alex enjoys snowboarding.
Tiffany Saraceno
SVP, Sales
Tiffany Saraceno joined the Appraisal Firewall team after 7 years in title and escrow sales. In 2011, she made a career switch to mortgage software. Her ability to build lasting relationships, understand where the appraisal industry is headed, plus her expansive knowledge of technology has been an asset to the SharperLending and Appraisal Firewall brands. She integrates product enhancement requests from customers with a well rounded view of appraisal needs to make sure system functionality continues to be all it should be.
In her spare time (she will say "what spare time?") Tiffany has 2 children. She has built or remodeled a home every couple years for the past 11 years. She loves to garden, enjoys hiking in the PNW mountains, works with a local animal rescue and donates time to Meals on Wheels.
Danielle Walker
Product & Channel Manager
Danielle boasts a 10+ year tenure with SharperLending, and was present for the inception of Appraisal Firewall. Because she basically grew up within the walls of SharperLending, she has a breadth and depth of knowledge of its systems. She has worked on every product under the company at one point or another and now focuses her time on managing the development and growth of Appraisal Firewall, or as she so lovingly refers to it, her “baby.” She takes the helm in leading the company in bold, unexplored directions with product development, system integrations and really cool feature enhancements. She keeps projects in-line and on time for release into the mainstream market, all while wrangling tangent-seeking developers and using acronyms like API and SQL.
If you can ever get her away from her desk, Danielle enjoys traveling to faraway lands, binging Netflix shows and telling bad jokes in her spare time. She also loves food, whether it's eating food, cooking food or even just talking about food.
Joe Ware
VP of Sales
Joe has more than 25 years in the real estate appraisal and settlement services industries. Most recently he served as National Sales Manager for Xome’s appraisal management technology, and prior. to that he was SVP and National Sales Manager for SWBC’s Lending Solutions Division where he led Sales and Marketing for their valuation and bundled services platform. During his 16-year tenure with SWBC he was instrumental in the development and launch of an ordering and management SaaS platform and was successful in building out the technology and valuation solution to credit union, community bank and mortgage industries. His 10 years of experience in commercial valuation culminated with him receiving his MAI designation and owning his own valuation company.
He is an experienced leader with a proven track record of increasing sales, lowering costs, creating operational efficiencies, expediting the loan process and development of long-term relationships. When asked, “In what ways will you take care of customers?” Joe replied, “We provide the most innovative and technologically advanced solutions to help our financial mortgage clients exceed their goals. We partner with them to make sure they are achieving the greatest efficiencies in their operations and assisting with providing their customers the best in service. We are looking not only for satisfied customers, we want them to be “Raving Fans” of SharperLending and Appraisal Firewall.
Joe and his wife Kim have three daughters and make their home in San Antonio, Texas. Two of his daughters and his wife are teachers, which keeps Joe up to date on the latest elementary school fashion and craze. Joe enjoys reading, golfing and skiing in his spare time.
Laura Henderson Burger
Customer Service Manager
After a decade of collecting a variety of multitasking and people organizing skills, first as a personal assistant and then as a cardiac scheduler, Laura jumped at the opportunity to join the Appraisal Firewall team in 2013. Not only did this speak to her passion for problem solving, but also her desire to not need to know CPR for a living. In 2016 Laura became the Customer Service Supervisor. She loves working with the team to provide the best possible service to our clients as well as constantly collaborating to enhance Appraisal Firewall.
Outside of the office, Laura likes to spend time with her husband Nick and their two cats Señor and Winry. They enjoy traveling, spending time at the family cabin and going to concerts & movies.