Anyone interested in appraisal forms in Excel?

[George Hatch]

It's just a question.

I'm curious if anyone would be interested in using Excel-based appraisal forms. I've already built a set of non-Fannie appraisal forms for my own use and I really like some of the things I can do with it.

For instance, if you subscribe to an MLS or other online database and they have an export feature you can rig up an autopopulate function that will fill in the data entry for the subject and all the comps. You can even merge data from two or more databases prior to the autopopulating function, and then if necessary you can override the inputs into any of the fields as you see fit.

You could incorporate pages into your reports that would take advantage of Excel's regression analysis and graphing capabilities. You can put all the pages in the report into whatever order you want, so that you can keep the meat of the report all together and cut down on making your readers go back-n-forth.

I think you can even convert Excel files into some of the other spreadsheet programs, including some freebies like OpenOffice. If so, that basically reduces the monetary cost of use to zero; you just have to be willing to spend the time. As a bonus (and here's the part I really like), Excel and other spreadsheet programs are very stable in a number of operating environments.


I don't know that such a setup would necessarily be a replacement for your current appraisalware providor, particularly the advanced functions they provide like transmission via AppraisalPort or via formats that allow your clients to do other stuff with the data, but then again some people might think that lack of capability is a plus.

We could do it as an open source deal where those who want to contribute fixes and improvements and new forms and such do so on their own. Everyone would use the setup at their own risk.

Anyone? Anyone?

 

[Smokey Bear]

A geek after my own heart!

 

[George Hatch]

Here's a pdf of one of the forms I built. As you can see, it's obviously not intended for use by anyone who's in Fannie-mode.

 

[Randall Garrett]

FWIW, there is a tool in Apex Medina that lets you drag and drop the sketch form into a spreadsheet. Alternately, you can drag and drop just the sketch "panel" and the individual calculations to a cell or just export the calculations as an generic XLS.

Hope this helps in your move/desire for an Excel-based solution!

-Randall Garrett-
..Apex Software..

/end/

 

[Riick]

I'm curious / interested. What more do you have George?

 

[EDWARD BERRY]

WOULD YOU LIKE ONE IN VISACAL?(TRS80)

WE DID THE ERC FORM YEARS AGO BUT THAT WAS BEFOR WINDOWS SO THE FONT SIZE WAS A PROBLEM.

FOR SEVERAL YEARS WE USED EXCEL ON OUR FARM REPORTS. THE SUMMARY PAGE WAS SO EASY THAT WAY.

THE FORMULAS FOR THE SOIL TYPE EXTRACTION, $/ACRE AND $/BIRD, $ /SF , ETC WAS WONDERFUL.

THE SALES WERE EASY TO IMPORT.

I THINK THAT THERE GURU IN TEAGUS (SIC) TEXAS HAS THE UAR FORM IN Excel.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

ARKIE ED.

 

[Lawrence R.]

I would be interested George, I have one specific case to use a non fannie form.

 

[Thomas N. Morgan]

George,

There was a good bit about this on this Forum several years ago. Remeber John David Biggers?

Tom

 

[George Hatch]

I THINK THAT THERE GURU IN TEAGUS (SIC) TEXAS HAS THE UAR FORM IN Excel.

Yeah, I remember that. I think his first name is Alan and he calls it the "Tejas form" Tejas referring to Texas, I guess. I'm horrible with names, though, so I don't remember his last name, although I do remember the "Buena Suerto" signoff he uses on his posts. I never did see his form but I do remember him commenting on it and some of the features he had built into it.

Actually, the way I started was I had built some forms 10 years ago using an off-the-shelf form development program that was designed for doing invoices and lightweight stuff. It worked, but it was slow and unstable. More trouble than it was worth.

I took another shot at it a couple years ago using Excel when the SOWR came along because it rendered obsolete the Uniform Commercial/Industrial Summary Appraisal Report (UCISAR) format that had been developed by The Appraisal Foundation. I had been using that form for certain liteweight commercial appraisal assignments. My update of that form was the intial version. I later made variations of that form for apartments, land, and SFRs. What I really like about "the set" is that all of these forms follow the same general order and have the same look, thus promoting a certain amount of consistency. A good appraisal form makes it easy for the casual reader to follow what's going on and where to find the same information from one report to the next.

Sometimes a 5c cigar has its uses.



The SFR form I have runs 8 pages (letter sized), not counting an Income Approach or an extra comps page. That's about equivalent to the Fannie form at 6 pages, except that I already include a SOW section so that doesn't have to be added in. Obviously I didn't include a lot of poison pill verbiage like the Fannie forms use so I don't have to fill in any holes or contradict any toxic statements.

I built the thing so that I have plenty of room to make my comments, and if necessary add more pages in between without disrupting the flow. You can see that I formatted it to make it a little easier to read than the URAR. The comment fields are adjustable so if necessary you can make one field longer and another one shorter on the same page without messing up the pagination; but the flip side is that you need to keep an eye on page lengths so that you don't wind up "creating" another page that only has a couple lines on it.

For format, I took elements I liked from the UCISAR, the URAR and alamode's GPAR and to a lesser extent, an element or two from the AI residential forms as well as some other elements I've already been using in my narratives.

I've also been using Excel for my exhibit pages. Photos and most other images drop right in; you just have to resize them. I think I have Apex Medina but I was never smart enough to figure out how to drag-n-drop the image in directly; I did it cave-man style with a copy-paste function, which is a little cludgey but it does work.

Anyways, that's what I did for my non-Fannie assignments. I only cite it as an example of what we could do with the URAR and other Fannie forms that you guys use on a regular basis.

The thing is, I'm not a very savvy Excel user and I was still able to came up with a functional setup that doesn't take me much extra time, if any, than when I use alamode's older version. Granted, their new versions have a lot more features but I never used appraisalware enough to make it worth my while to figure out how to do all the Detective Gadget stuff.

I'm sure if a couple of us actually bought a book on Excel and started messing around with it we could probably gin up something that's got some flexibility for the casual users. It would probably never be competitive with what the professional appraisalware companies do but it would give a user the flexibility to come up with forms that work the way they work. I'm referring to the manner in which each of them handle transfers and math functions and the choice of units of comparison and such - Because they are selling to a group they have to build the preferences for that group rather than for the individual. OTOH, when you control the form you can automate everything to fit your situation and your own personal style.

 

[George Hatch]

George,

There was a good bit about this on this Forum several years ago. Remeber John David Biggers?

Tom

Actually, I do. I bought a license to that program and built a form or two on it. It worked, too; although I did run into some stability problems with it on my computer (most likely as a result of errors on my part). It turned out to be more hassle for him than it would be worth so he eventually went in a different direction.

Truthfully, I found designing forms in Excel to be a lot simpler overall, although the output has a plain-Jane look to it that some people probably won't like. As I said, what I really like about Excel (and other spreadsheet programs), is that it seems to be real stable overall. Navigating from page to page is super easy if you set them up with tabs. The one thing I did do was separate my report file and my exhibits file, as adding a photo or map into an Excel file can slow it down unless you have a really fast computer.