So when was the last time you saw an appraisal report that was typed out w/typewriter?

[RCA]

And which used 35mm pics that were glued onto Forms & Worms addenda pages? No APN, no sales history, no HBU analysis (21ac property), references 4 land sales but doesn't identify any of them, averages the pricing to conclude to $65k/ac. Makes reference to "Fair Market Value" but includes a MV definition, the 2-3 cert is incomplete by what has been required in any edition of USPAP.

I've never seen anything like it. The appraiser whose name is on it is a CG with a license number similar to my own, which means they came online at the inception of licensing back in 1992. I do wonder if that's who did the appraisal, though.

No doubt he pulled up some old report he did decades ago - and just decided to copy and paste.

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New appraisal form software like Bradford Technologies "Night Hawk" is coming out. Hell, the process now of going from XML to basically minimally restricted Fannie Mae is so EASY I am even thinking about doing it. ---> There will be lots of new form software, --- well if there is still a market for appraisals.

Writing software to use paper-based forms for the User Interface was a pain in the butt. That is now getting thrown out the window.

All kinds of ideas about new Fannie Mae software. Yep. Cool.

 

[Flakey]

I hated backups to floppy. I had sleeves of discs. The sleeves were labeled, the discs were labeled. I would do a backup every day for that days work and a complete system backup once a month. Hours of removing and inserting discs. Finally got an automatic backup to tape. That damn thing was so clunky, I was afraid of it. If you did have to restore something, it could be a nightmare. Lost a hard drive due to lightening once (had a surge protector and UPS) and it took days to recover. Still had to manually re-enter some data.

 

[George Hatch]

Back in the day it wasn't unusual to have to reformat your hard drive and reinstall the operating system and all your other programs several times a year.

I finally did achieve permanent appraisalware stability when I dropped the appraisalware programs altogether some 12 years ago after having put all my report forms on Excel. Glitch-free since then. I don't even use Excel or Word anymore, these files run on Libre. The only appraisal-specific program I own now is a 2009 vintage sketch program that I have to run in a virtual machine under a stripped down version of WinXP. One of my sons works in IT and he built an installable VM which is stored on a thumb drive (actually I have two of them). It's a crude way to install, but effective. Obviously I only use it on one computer at a time, but I never have to worry about it if a hard drive crashes.

 

[alebrewer]

You didn't even type the reports on Forms and Worms - they used a primitive word processor and form feed printer. Last time I typed on a true typewriter was in high school - and even then we were starting to use primitive computers. Now - the form feed forms went away long after the 'photo gluing' and 'copier mapping' and triplicate hardcopy hand delivery... I was still doing that in the mid-90's.

 

[George Hatch]

We used typewriters on individual 2-sided pre-printed forms for years. We had an offsite typist who picked up the handwritten and returned the typed reports overnight for $1/page. And the shop kept another IBM Selectic onhand to do minor corrections and additional addenda page headers. Whiteout and correction tape cartridges.
I used to handwrite my 1004s in pencil while I was out in the field, part of the front page while sitting in my car, part while inspecting the property, and the rest after I ran my comps. No distractions. The challenge is that I needed to have all my research done before I went out, which doesn't always work when you run into something you didn't expect.

The statute of limitations is up, but it was common practice back then to take a couple of generic pics in the neighborhood where the street address wasn't visible. We'd keep a small stack of pics in our desk and when someone was short a comp pic we'd share them between each other. Not the right thing to do, but then again nobody ever got caught doing it.

Yeah, I learned some bad habits when I was coming up, same as most appraisers of that era. I had to relearn a number of things about appraising after I moved on from there.

 

[alebrewer]

I used to handwrite my 1004s in pencil while I was out in the field

I believe FHA accepted hand written (one page) reports as bona fide appraisals - up through the late '80's as I recall.