Your measuring and sketching process

[CenCoastApr]

If I'm not mistaken, you can install OneNote on your iPad and at least have all your assignments accessible & get your fieldnotes synced back to your Windows desktop. I'm sure there is a similar cloud sync solution to get your sketches transferred back automatically as well. You can always email them from your iPad if nothing else. Photographs taken in the field are the big issue to get back home, I use a 35mm camera and download them via USB cable back at the office although it does have a Wi-Fi option as well that I've been too lazy to set up. That's why I have never used an "appraisal app" for filling out the URAR in the field, the few times I tried taking photographs with my tablet I was disappointed with the awkwardness of it all. I prefer a nice camera that I can hold in one hand and zoom out through my passenger window when taking comp pictures. Don't like using my phone for that and hated the tablet so old school camera for me. If I import the comparable addresses that I chose in the field into the URAR directly from the MLS, then I can automatically add the correct address labels when I read those photographs into the database and I almost never end up having to type an address that way. A weird workaround but preferable to trying to stick a tablet out the window for a photograph in the hood.
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Yes the awkwardness with appraisal app in the field is also my experience. I try to fill out as much of the URAR form as I can before the inspection. but that means that I cannot sync any app entered inspection data back into that subjects appraisal report, lest I override my previous work. (There maybe a work around that I am too dense to discover). I guess I am searching for that magic unified theory of report writing and site inspection. Now where did I leave that string?

 

[TC]

While I have been using a Disto for over 20 years, I'm still a pen to paper guy in the field. Don't use a clipboard, I have my inspection form printed on a file folder. If I can find one, I use the county assessor's exterior foot print that I draw on the folder prior to inspection. Always worried if I went totally digital in the field I'd erase everything by accident. This should come in handy tomorrow.

 

[Tiffany Gibbons]

My dentist doesn't have a grooming table quarantine room...I hope

I've done 3 houses in the past six months that have Doggy showers/grooming tables, lol due to home based dog spa businesses. Just similar little rooms with extra plumbing.

 

[CenCoastApr]

My dentist doesn't have a grooming table quarantine room...I hope

Hey… ya gotta add value for a one stop shop! Barber surgeons used to be a thing. Is the lovely fur baby in your avitor yours?

My dentist doesn't have a grooming table quarantine room...I hope

 

[Tiffany Gibbons]

Well I don’t do tax appraisal anymore. They would never allow you to do that AND help taxpayers do an appeal. I did have to work one as a tax appraiser. It was a duck farm that My idiot boss at the time had appraised as sub dividable, even if it was not. He overvalued it by over 800k. Then months later, when the taxpayer naturally appealed it, grouchy pants boss man dropped it on my desk and told me it was my problem since it was in my assigned area of the county. SIGH but tax appraisal is kind a different animal.

Oh, I missed that part. We could work other counties but yeah not the same one as you're assessing in. I was always too exhausted from defending values at that Assessor's Office to do that anyway.

 

[Tiffany Gibbons]

While I have been using a Disto for over 20 years, I'm still a pen to paper guy in the field. Don't use a clipboard, I have my inspection form printed on a file folder. If I can find one, I use the county assessor's exterior foot print that I draw on the folder prior to inspection. Always worried if I went totally digital in the field I'd erase everything by accident. This should come in handy tomorrow.

Yes, I do take the Assessor's outline if available as well.

 

[CenCoastApr]

Oh, I missed that part. We could work other counties but yeah not the same one as you're assessing in. I was always too exhausted from defending values at that Assessor's Office to do that anyway.

Yes that is the same here. In theory I could do both, just not in the same county. but they are completely separate licenses as I am sure they are in your part of the world. As a home owner and long time generational family farmer with small business owning relatives, it is hard to keep hammering the overburdened taxpayer. There was always this push to find reasons to “add value.” That being said, Yes, you are correct that the “defending your values” part was a drag. : C’mon numb nuts. This is literally the law and I must abide by it. If you don’t like it, call your state rep and vote accordingly. I have Zero authority to make special accommodations for you.

 

[Tiffany Gibbons]

Yes that is the same here. In theory I could do both, just not in the same county. but they are completely separate licenses as I am sure they are in your part of the world. As a home owner and long time generational family farmer with small business owning relatives, it is hard to keep hammering the overburdened taxpayer. There was always this push to find reasons to “add value.” That being said, Yes, you are correct that the “defending your values” part was a drag. : C’mon numb nuts. This is literally the law and I must abide by it. If you don’t like it, call your state rep and vote accordingly. I have Zero authority to make special accommodations for you.

Well, I was in commercial so hard to get teared up over multi billion $ corporations and REITs getting out of paying taxes on fully leased up luxury apartments and such. Yeah typical homeowner is the overburdened tax payer. Farmers get Green Belt exemption.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Is the lovely fur baby in your avitor yours?

Nope... All my pets are gone...This was Mohammad Alice - high on her catnip mouse

 

[Mike Ault]

Yes the awkwardness with appraisal app in the field is also my experience. I try to fill out as much of the URAR form as I can before the inspection. but that means that I cannot sync any app entered inspection data back into that subjects appraisal report, lest I override my previous work. (There maybe a work around that I am too dense to discover). I guess I am searching for that magic unified theory of report writing and site inspection. Now where did I leave that string?

I deal with that by filling out "as little" of the URAR as possible before going out on the inspection. The FlexMLS system I use most often makes it easy to save eight or nine potential comparables under a "listing collection" and once I look at the property, I can narrow that collection down to the best seven on my tablet and have it print a MLS map to my OneNote file associated with the subject, making it easy to picture them all in the field. Once back at the office I will export my "narrowed down listing collection" of the comparables that I just drove and photographed to a "text export file" and import that into the comparable grid in my desktop alamode. That way I have all the addresses preloaded and never have to type any of them in while I'm importing the photos off of my 35mm camera (or any point prior to that). I still manually fill out my field inspection sheet and have to manually input that into Alamode back at the office however I messed with "the app thing" long enough to know that if you happen to "miss check" one of those tiny boxes in the field you don't have any paper backup to verify them against at all. Plus, I spent 22 years doing things that way and maybe I'm just a little "Luddite" when it comes to filling out forms in the field. I wouldn't want my "app reticence" to dissuade others from trying them to see how well they fit their workflow though. Once you get something workable for you figured out, please come back and share!