I would think that all vendors have forms that will not convert...
You bring up a good point. The data format has been developed and made available to the appraisalware vendors. These vendors already have at least some forms that will convert. When there are forms that won't convert, whose fault is that? The portal company which has developed and promulgated the uniform data format or the appraisalware company that has failed to work within that format?
The central question here is whether these limitations are so severe that appraisers can't use these formats to build credible workproducts. That being the case, the inability to send a certain type of cover sheet or a TOC or more than 12 comps or some other unsupported addendum just doesn't trigger my outrage meter. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.
I remember back in the 1990s seeing a few (as in, 3 or 4) examples of narrative-style reports that were developed in Wintotal and which consisted of 50 or 60 single addendum pages. You know, the addendum page that has the header at the top and lines? This was before Wintotal added to their software the word-processing style multi-page addenda that wraps the text onto the next page.
I can only imagine the amount of hassle it took to use the software in that manner. Nevertheless, despite these limitations the appraisers managed to come through, and the reports came out okay. That is to say, the only problems I remember noting were appraisal problems, not report problems.
When I think back to the DOS based and first Windows based appraisalware programs, I remember some fairly significant limitations. I also remember that those limitations never stopped appraisers from using appraisalware. They might switch vendors, but they still stuck with the use of appraisalware because the upsides far outweighed the downsides.
Given our community's reputation for being willing and able to work around some seriously buggy appraisalware programs, I guess I'm just a little surprised that some of you seem to be elevating a few technical limitations in a data format into being an ethical dilemna.
Lastly, I find it a little disingenous to say you can't send a cover sheet or TOC page or any other exhibit in that format. I'm pretty sure one could build such a page, print it to a pdf and then insert the pdf onto a supported addendum page that will upload. Copy of a copy, so to speak. Or, you might be able to build those addendum on the word processor addenda pages. After all, the cover pages and TOCs I use in my narrative reports are all built using a wordprocessor format, not a form.
It ain't rocket science.
