Narrative Software or Sticking with Word?

[Terrel L. Shields]

You are faster with what you are familiar with. I was writing reports long before I became an appraiser. So I prefer to format my own reports. I don't see the need to go to the expense of template software. So each of my approaches are subdocuments. The intro, certs, and summary are subdocuments. The exhibits as well. I "do" the approaches, create the exhibits, then create the intro/summary. I then put the report together. Inside the Sales approach, I suck in my comps from my own created database.

Since "comps" tend to be fairly rare comparatively speaking (it's not like I ever had 80 comparables of say a mini-storage) this isn't too difficult to manage with a folder and subfolders to store the comps.

Again, the built in spreadsheet in WordPerfect allows me to create several versions of adjustment grid or cost approach so I remain in the program for the whole report analysis and writing time.

 

[residentialguy]

You can use your 1004 form additional comments. I like my software (SFREP) as it gives you headings in natural progression of an appraisal. SOW...Legal Descpr...sale data...neighborhood, etc. You can also add the invoice, letter or transmittal, title, etc

 

[NachoPerito]

I use Narrative1 and have been using it for a couple of years after using word and excel before that.

1)Does the software save you time in writing the report? It does for a more detailed report, but not a summary report. Creating full writeups is necessary with Narrative1 and a report that is more summarized is harder to create more efficiently.

2) Have you received positive or negative feedback from your clients regarding your reports since you started using the software? I haven't, but I am sure they like it better than my old format, but I haven't had anyone tell me how good it looks.

3) Is it worth the investment? Good question. I am not sure. It hasn't saved a lot of time for me, but it looks better. I wish the database they have was better because right now I have a lot of sales and leases that are databased in Narrative1, but I have a whole other database in excel because it is so much easier to find the right comps (filtering, searching, selecting). Maintaining two separate databases is a lot of extra time.

 

[kiritf]

I'm a Datappraise user. Addicted. It's the best database I've had and I've tried all of them. It's super easy to tag word docs to make output templates and the same with excel workbooks.

I do not use the full report-writing and I don't think it's practical to even in a perfect world. I input the subject information, add sales and rental comps, then I use the excel output template which it shoots everything out onto and I can use the adjustment charts and other meat and potato parts to insert into my appraisal. We have regular Word doc templates for property types and levels of appraisals. We just insert the info into them from the Datappraise workbook.

The Web Doc library is a particularly awesome tool. I have everything in there. It's just a tab (for those that don't use) on Word and it can house a library of all the documents you want. I had an admin put in zoning write-ups for all of our core counties. I have a property in X county zoned C-1, I can just go to the web doc library, open up the doc, and insert it and then add discussion. I have special write-ups on bigger market influences in the area, market analysis templates, MSA write-ups, property ratings sheets, etc. I can move pretty fast through a report and pack it with good information. Just have the admin update things here and there and also I change things when I have a doc open from time to time.

The DB also houses OAR's, PGIM's, expense comps, rental, sales, and whatever else info you want to retain. Even multipliers. Pretty solid web portal accessible from anywhere.

 

[Ginger528]

I was just thinking about how all of the solutions out there are a bit less than and it seems there are always plenty of appraisers who just don't want to bother with some new way of doing things (understandably - it takes a lot to figure it out and get up to speed).

I think it would be interesting to discuss (and maybe this should be a separate thread) what type of solution would be seen as making appraisal work more efficient and would be easy enough to adopt to be worth it for those who are apprehensive to seriously consider a software solution. The software options tend to try to offer a database and report writing functionality. The report writing functionality seems to be the piece that a lot of appraisers have an aversion to. In fact, I know some who use Datappraise simply as a database and ignore the report writing portion.

Should these companies be offering different levels of functionalities for different prices? I don't know if it would be worth it for the software companies to offer that type of tiered solution, but I wonder if that would make it more appealing to those who are currently on the fence.

I don't know about you all, but from my seat I don't see fees going up as much as I would like. Seems we NEED ways to be more efficient. Without buy-in from many and obvious demand, the solutions will continue to drag along the "minimally viable product" line and it is going to take forever to have a fully functional easy to use software package.

I would be interested to hear thoughts on that.

Efficiency is the main reason I was questioning the use of software. Over the past year it seems my area has become more competitive with lower fees and faster turn times expected from clients. I couldn't help but wonder if I missed the train on something that would save me lots of time and offset the current expectations. I currently use Word and Excel for my reports and FileMaker for comparable database. It works OK. I'm sure there are better ways, but with the feedback from this post, I'm not sure it is worth the investment. If the primary reason for some of this software is for a database, I don't think it would be worth it for me personally. I can search Filemaker using any field that has been created, so finding data that I have written up is effortless. The only drawback would be that it is written up in Filemaker and imported via pdf to Word for the report. Not a big deal though.
I know some appraisers who simply use Excel templates to input the majority of the subject information which then populates areas of the Word doc using linked tables. I may explore this a bit more to see if this may be something to implement.
I can say from the feedback, the software idea doesn’t seem overly helpful. Some good functionality here and there, but not something that doesn’t take quite a bit of time to get the way you want it. I may be willing to pay the price if a software company took one of my existing reports and customized everything for me. Until then, I may just keep doing what I’m doing.

 

[tsiegel]

I'm a Datappraise user. Addicted. It's the best database I've had and I've tried all of them. It's super easy to tag word docs to make output templates and the same with excel workbooks.

I do not use the full report-writing and I don't think it's practical to even in a perfect world. I input the subject information, add sales and rental comps, then I use the excel output template which it shoots everything out onto and I can use the adjustment charts and other meat and potato parts to insert into my appraisal. We have regular Word doc templates for property types and levels of appraisals. We just insert the info into them from the Datappraise workbook.

The Web Doc library is a particularly awesome tool. I have everything in there. It's just a tab (for those that don't use) on Word and it can house a library of all the documents you want. I had an admin put in zoning write-ups for all of our core counties. I have a property in X county zoned C-1, I can just go to the web doc library, open up the doc, and insert it and then add discussion. I have special write-ups on bigger market influences in the area, market analysis templates, MSA write-ups, property ratings sheets, etc. I can move pretty fast through a report and pack it with good information. Just have the admin update things here and there and also I change things when I have a doc open from time to time.

The DB also houses OAR's, PGIM's, expense comps, rental, sales, and whatever else info you want to retain. Even multipliers. Pretty solid web portal accessible from anywhere.

Kiritf, your comments bring an interesting point to light. As I have said before, I am a Datappraise user as well and find myself wrestling with the software often. The differences in the way we use the software as I see it are that:

1) I do use the report writing functionality and I think I pay a price for that in terms of time spent messing with the software; and

2) I do not have support staff to deal with all of the ideal template creation aspects of the software that would make it more efficient. I often find that there is something that I could do to set up Datappraise to be more efficient, but just don't have the time right then to do it. As time goes by, I forget that that needs to happen and the next time I am in that situation where that thing could be useful, I do not have it ready to use. If I had support staff this would be a different picture entirely.

So, conclusion... It seems that the benefits of software are fully realized via support staff and the report writing functionality needs a lot of work.

Interesting to note, I am thinking that there are a lot of benefits to support staff. I don't know about other markets so much, but in my area, Appraisers tend to prefer to go it alone with nobody else's hands in their work. While I get that, don't we need to do something to advance the industry?

Just thinking...

 

[dawgpoundrok]

We recently invested in Narrative One with the hopes of increasing our report prep time. However, after several weeks of trying to do some reports, we have gone back to using MS Word.

The N1 software had a good presentation, could increase the time, and was pretty neat. However, we kept getting error messages, comps going missing, or comps not getting put into the report. After fighting wtih the software for a week, we decided that it is quicker for us to go back to the old way of inputting data.

if the software performed as it should, the N1 software may help. However, we never could get the bugs worked out.

We may try it in the future, but as of right now, not going back

 

[Tejus]

Creating an appraisal report should be a simple, straightforward task. I handle commercial and residential reports in the same manner, there is no difference.

Each report starts with a basic template containing the things like:
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Cover Letter
Map Page(s)
Photo page(s)
etc. . .

Multiple templates can be created if needed, and the appropriate template selected when beginning the assignment.

Depending on the assignment, add additional "stuff" from your "stuff library". If you need something which is not in your "stuff library", then create it on the fly and save it to your "stuff library" for future use.

I prefer to create / save my db for each assignment from the most recent data sources I have available. This ensures my db is up to date and I can verify my data if I need to in the future.

I find the number of issues / problems I encounter may increase as my software solution complexity increases. Therefore, I use a tightly integrated software solution which simplifies my software solution.

I also use a software system that I am familiar with and avoid having to learn another software HI and usage.

My entire system is built on Excel.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Seems we NEED ways to be more efficient.

Isn't that the Hillbilly Trucking Company problem? Two hillbillies bought watermelons for a dollar, then sold them for a dollar and so after a week or two, decided they needed to do something to be more profitable. So they bought a bigger truck.

The problem is only solved by demanding a professional fee commensurate with the work performed.

The database issue I am unclear on. What kind of "database" do you really need? Once I research a sale, I create a file with it. I don't have 900 sales at any given moment in my market so...my memory (bad as it may be) is sufficient that I can retrieve my comps as needed. Those files are pigeon holed in subfolders for each small town I do. Sometimes (often) I may need to find comps from another town to do a project so you get the idea that maybe 40 sales are all I have. For land sales, I simply do the search and create those as a file as well.

A former helper used software and it took him a long time to write a report. They were somewhat fluffy with lots of white space...I saw no advantage except it was preformatted and I do agree that Word, in particular, is not much fun to format... WP is much easier program for me to use.

 

[BigBlueGA]

I use OpenOffice.org and a custom made template that I've built over the years. I'm incredibly efficient with putting the report together, I doubt that any narrative software could do it quicker or better. A few thoughts...

• I've set my template up using variables so that the first couple of pages (do not print in the final report) are filled with variable inputs that I click and input a value... then the value is fed throughout my report in the appropriate places (like primary road name, property owner, client, addresses, blah blah blah). It prevents a lot of minor mistakes/typos and saves a few minutes.
• I can run calculations on those variables too, so I can for instance put in a tax assessment value and a millage rate and my estimated taxes are automatically calculated and put in the property spot in the report.
• I've built standard tables for Sales Comparison grids, cost calculation sheets, band of investment calculations, etc. that are all based on formulas and pulled into the appropriate spots as I go... so when I calculate my OAR in the income approach it automatically gets pulled to another table at the end and multiplied against my NOI, calculating the indication of value. Saves time and once again avoids errors.
• I've built the template using the "Styles" functionality of the word processor... so instead of formatting each piece of text in the document I'm assigning each component a "style".... like "Paragraph Header", "Photo Caption", "Table Data", etc. Then I can quickly change fonts, sizes, formats, etc. by editing the style definition instead of every bit of text in my report. Comes in handy because every once in a while I get bored with how my reports look and I can change the entire style in thirty seconds flat.
• The template is built to accomodate 90% of my work... as long as the assignment is straight forward and the data is available and on hand I can literally do a report in one to two hours. Clone/edit jobs can be as little as 30 minutes. Of course this rarely happens!

Of course there are also major downsides....

• I have no good comps database. I'm currently using Evernote. Everytime I do a new comp writeup I paste it in as a new note and tag it (office, teardown, land, market name, etc.). This does work well for browsing existing comp data but there is no graceful way to pull them back into my report without going back to find the last report they were in and copying from there. This messes up my aforementioned formulas (because the table references get thrown off) so I have to fiddle with those and that can be a headache.
• I haven't managed to make it play well with external spreadsheets, they always seem to cause more problems than they solve. Because of this I try to stick to the tables functionality as much as possible (they are treated sort of like spreadsheets in the software in regards to formulas, etc. but they are much more limited).
• Sometimes it can be buggy and issues can pop up from time to time that are absolutely infuriating... page numbering has often been a headache, pasting large images can screw up some things sometimes... when this happens you will kill an afternoon trying to figure out a workaround.
• As you can imagine, as soon as a job doesn't fit your template well you will be working from scratch to accomodate it.

I don't think there is a "perfect" solution, or if there is I haven't found it yet. But if you are comfortable with the word processors I say stick with them and maybe learn for ways to make your process more efficient within those. There is a lot of depth to all of the major word processors that are out now, probably a ton of functionality there that you don't even know about.