FMLS sells out to CUBICASA

[Joe Flacco]

Listing floor plans are very useful. The purpose of the listing floor plan is to show the interior layout. Not really to calculate the size of the house.

 

[alebrewer]

Again, just another gross waste of money when you could hire seasoned professionals to provide the same with certifications.

What if the users of our services have determined they don't need 'seasoned professionals to provide the same with certifications.'?

 

[sputnam]

Why would it be a bad thing if more Realtors used CubiCasa? One of the common complaints about the ANSI mandate for appraiser has been that the comps aren't mesured the same way. How does a Realtor using CubiCasa to determine SF before listing a property take money out of an appraiser's pocket. Ale is correct... CubiCasa isn't free to use.

 

[GWISC]

I think I am in Alebrewer's camp on this one. Brokers submitting listings to our local MLS (not owned by CUBICASA) routinely submit floorplans. More info is certainly helpful IMO.

As for the potential of burglars casing listings for future robbery; Most listing already show interior photos. Many of those photos show the owner's worldly possessions. Those interior photos also help formulate a rough floorplan as generally the photos are sequential to the photographer's tour of the house. I don't see the warranted gripe for this one.

 

[Joe Flacco]

You can't rely on the listing floor plan GLA from scans because they all say "gross internal area". It is just additional information to reconcile differences between info from assessor records and listing info imputed by agents.

 

[alebrewer]

You can't rely on the listing floor plan GLA from scans because they all say "gross internal area". It is just additional information to reconcile differences between info from assessor records and listing info imputed by agents.

The tests I've done with CubiCasa are actually quite close to my own measurements. Within 5% to be sure. And I think the new LiDar technology is even better than Cubi, although it's only available on Apple products at this point.

 

[J Grant]

I don't believe that agents using Cabi Cuba for their listings takes money out of appraisers' pockets, just as their using photos does not take money away from us., Their use of it for a listing is different from that of a PDC collector using it on an inspection for an appraisal or WAIVER..

Taking money from appraisers to see it flow to others for GSE work was a policy decision; the tech is an excuse. Saving consumers $ is another excuse. If they were interested in saving consumers $, they would go after the really big fees on the lender side. A hundred $ more or less for a valuation is not going to change a borrower's life.

That said, I wonder how popular it will be for listing purposes, given possible privacy issues and the reluctance of agents to measure their own listings for legal reasons. If it becomes more popular, no biggie to me. The floorplan might chase some buyers away from a property, though, if they think a bedroom is in the wrong place or such. Like everyone else, the agents are stuck using more and more teh and making less and less money.

 

[bluechip]

Per a good friend who has been an appraiser as long as I have: I think this became a fad. I haven't seen much uptake for cubicasa outside of a few photographers that provide a free floorplan without the measurements. I have told everyone that this stuff is processed off shore and its not good for foreign entities to have such data on our military folks housing. No one has disagreed.

 

[chad hampton]

Cubicasi is good for floor layouts to help you lay out your furniture, but I wouldn’t use it for anything more than that. like most of these tech fads, it’s not very useful in the end.

 

[Joe Flacco]

Matterport virtual tours were a fad. Floorplans are not. We have had floorplans with listings long before phone scans and some agents pay pay a lot for nice floor plans. The phone scans make floorplans feasible for all listings.