Comp Database

[NachoPerito]

Try taking an Access class, if you are near New Horizons Computer Learning Center, or similar. SBA may also have offerings, or people there may know of outlets for teachers or lower cost consultants. Think also of junior colleges, someone may want a class project and solve your problem.

The design is crucial, and should be oriented to the data you most need and use in your practice area. Access works really well when populated into fields that make sense for the appraisal scope, and the software is already bundled in Office. A couple of tips are to design a field set that works, then copy the whole database for what matters to you, as Terrel mentioned, the year is crucial for him; I use location, so have about 10 similar databases which are filled. The beauty is you can search in the Table view to rapidly pick out comparables based on the search of the day, be that date, building size, $per Sq Ft, etc. Then, use the Form view for individual comparable presentation.

As Marion mentioned, automatic form filling is a very worthy goal. I recently outscourced a task to do this, but during the solution process, found the variety of MLS databases to lead to many problems like field mis-matches, and too much time expended for the usage rate of this tool in the appraisal process. So, not an easy solution, and the problem of using just the downloaded MLS data is that a decent comparable will also need research support for deed and tax records regarding current owner, transfer deed Liber/Page, discussion with participants, etc, which are not typically included in MLS sales records. So, batch entry works for now, and there are still hopes for a partially automated future.

Costowl shows costs of about $50-$250 per hour for database consultant, or $2,000-$10,000 for small business database solution. This may be the quickest way for a solution custom to your needs, but is dependent on communication between your desires and the ability of the consultant to deliver a database template with reasonable performance at a low and capped cost.

This is a dumb question, but can you attach photos in access?
Also, do you have different organized databases because it would get too slow if you were sifting through all your sales at once?

 

[Meandering]

This is a dumb question, but can you attach photos in access?
Also, do you have different organized databases because it would get too slow if you were sifting through all your sales at once?

Yes
You need to use Visual Basic, which came with your Office Suite.

Here are the instructions.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260858(v=vs.60).aspx

 

[Thomas Holding]

Access is a really great program if you need to perform complex searches from multiple data sets where the data might not be linked by a common data element such as a tax parcel number. It is like a multi-dimensional array. Access has certain limitations such as the number of columns allowed, which Excel does not. If you can format your data correctly in Excel, you can perform most of the same search and sorting functions that you can do in Excel without the column limitations. I use Excel extensively in the tax office where I work due to the enormous amount of data I am dealing with. I have over 60,000 unique parcels, each with approximately 1200 different elements that are represented on the tax card. That amounts to 60,000 rows plus 1,200 columns. With just a little bit of VBA coding, I can search, parse, and sort this data to extract just what I need in a matter of seconds. The greatest problem that I typically run into is that sometimes my input data is not properly formatted (where individual property data is contained on multiple rows, not on a single row with multiple columns). Again, with just a few lines of code, I can automate the process of sorting the data, removing duplicates, and putting the data in the correct format for filtering. There are many resources online from Youtube videos, to Excel VBA forums where you can easily find out how to make your customized database. If you PM me I would be happy to help you.

 

[Red Flint]

This is a dumb question, but can you attach photos in access?
Also, do you have different organized databases because it would get too slow if you were sifting through all your sales at once?

Yes, I use different databases, but each one has the same field format, so only needed one design, just copied the initial database.

 

[Michael P Jacobs MAI]

After developing or being heavily involved in development of several national commercial real estate comp databases (including C&W, Dow Jones/Teleres, a mortgage REIT and two others that will go nameless), as well as two "local" databases, here are my opinions... YMMV:

Single or very small offices should stick to XL with a standardized two-line comp summary grid linking to data sheets on another tab. Land is separate. I have a few extra columns for industrial that I hide for anything else, and the grid headers change for apartments. Replicating a comp is simply a matter of copying those two rows and pasting, followed by copying the photo and comments to the data sheet. This is what I use now that I am on my own, and could not imagine anything more flexible and time-efficient. I even import sales from costar and cross-check things like prior sales with a RealQuest download.

Larger single-location office can buy a package or have one developed for them by a local consultant or student. Microsoft Access is a perfect platform, but most of us here do not need a second career - and it is! For many of us learning relational database programming is interesting, but you won't see your family as often. Unfortunately, you almost have to know it to be able to plan and advise a programmer that doesn't know commercial real estate intimately.

Yes, I advise buying a commercial package for more than three appraisers rather than developing it yourself.

However, I don't like any of them and neither will you or anybody who is not paid hourly. I don't even like the ones that I have personally developed. There are too many fields! If I were to develop again, I would keep it to no more than 25 fields or so. The rest of the information should go in a single comment field.

For example, we spent a lot of time tracking detailed financials. Few fields were really necessary and added layers of error checking and appraiser frustration. I am not sure anyone ever searched for comps based on a discount rate - it is valuable information, but should be placed in comments where it can be explained and evaluated in context.

The number of fields grows exponentially as you try to do this yourself, making the database difficult to maintain, less understandable for users, and ugly.

I have about 100 other insights, but we'll spare you the reading. I suppose my only takeaway would be don't try to do it yourself, and either way keep it as simple as possible.

 

[Artyman1200]

I cringe when I read how some of you manage comps. I use DataComp. Yes, it looks outdated, but it's glitch free and time tested. You can set up custom comp templates so you don't have the whole spilling onto two pages thing. All of my comps are on one page and they look very nice and clean. You can highlight the fields in DataComp that will populate in your custom template so you don't have to try to remember when you enter new comps. It links to their Edge software so all my spreadsheets auto populate. I'm a one man shop and I would still recommend using a proper database and narrative software combo. Take the time to learn the software and you will achieve efficiency far beyond your competition. It's a thing of beauty every time I merge Word and Excel and out pops a report that looks like I spent significantly more time on it than I actually did. Check please.

 

[Russ Kitzberger]

There are several commercial database software solutions out there for small and large offices. Datacomp is one, narrative one offered one as part of their system, and there is a web based one datappraise (read their terms of use regarding loss of data, breaches, etc). There are probably more out there.