Harbor Pilot Program
Framework
Harbor proposes a federally funded, controlled pilot across Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, and Tampa-Orlando, limited to single-family homes. The pilot will test whether Harbor can improve appraisal delivery, protect independent valuation, reduce borrower and lender risk, and create a more accountable system before broader national implementation.
The pilot will coordinate participating independent appraisers with a scaled Harbor workforce of market analysts, technology staff, compliance personnel, borrower-support teams, and program administrators. Its focus will remain narrow, measurable, and practical: test the operating model in real transactions, compare results across three distinct markets, and determine which Harbor components are ready to scale.
Harbor will work with participating lenders, established housing-data providers, insurers, regulators, and other industry partners rather than attempting to replace existing systems all at once. This collaborative structure allows the pilot to use proven capabilities while testing how Harbor can coordinate them within one consistent valuation framework.
The pilot will also establish the operational foundation needed for future growth, including standardized procedures, secure data exchange, workforce training, compliance controls, and market-level reporting. The objective is to identify where Harbor adds the greatest value, where adjustments are needed, and how the framework can expand responsibly without losing its core safeguards.
Harbor in Operation
Appraisal Fee Financing
Harbor tests a structured payment model that removes the appraisal fee from the borrower’s immediate transaction costs and frees the lender from collecting, advancing, or managing the fee. The pilot will determine how the appraisal cost can be recovered through the loan-payment process without increasing principal or interest.
Protected Assignment Flow
Harbor tests a controlled assignment system that removes bidding, fee shopping, and direct appraiser selection from the loan-production process. Qualified independent appraisers receive assignments through protected rotation, while the Ethical Firewall separates valuation judgment from production priorities and transactional influence.
Forward-Looking Valuation Risk
Harbor tests HIG and MOVR as a new alternative to the ROV process. Working with established housing-data providers, HIG evaluates market direction and develops a supportable near-term future-value estimate for defined coverage periods. MOVR insures the additional lending risk between the appraised market value and the supported future value, giving lenders, borrowers, insurers, and appraisers a clearer and more collaborative path forward.
Results and Accountability
Harbor will evaluate how effectively the pilot improves appraisal delivery, reduces borrower friction, strengthens assignment consistency, and gives lenders a clearer framework for valuation risk. Results will be compared across Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, and Tampa-Orlando under different market conditions.
The $75 million pilot investment will support appraisal-fee funding, HIG technology and data access, MOVR insurance testing, three-market operations, compliance, auditing, cybersecurity, and independent evaluation. Harbor will document costs, transaction performance, recovery rates, measurable benefits, and needed revisions.
The Harbor Pilot Program will operate over 18 months. The opening phase will establish staffing, partnerships, technology, compliance controls, and market operations. The active phase will place Harbor into live single-family transactions across all three markets. The concluding phase will evaluate results and prepare recommendations for broader implementation.