George Hatch
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2002
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- California
So my preceding was a prelude to this one:
What do you think is going to happen when some title company figures out they can train someone off the street to go perform detailed physical inspections on the properties they are offering a title policy on, and they're handing that inspection to an appraiser they have hired to work out of their branch office?
If all one of these inspectors did was inspect, measure and photograph properties, how many of those could they complete in a day? If all their appraiser did was perform valuations and write reports - no phone calls for inspections, no working around some borrower's schedule, no transit to/from the neighborhood, no driving comps - no time spent on work that doesn't require our technical expertise as appraisers. How productive could that appraiser be?
If the company ran 2 or 3 inspectors to keep an appraiser busy how many of THOSE assignments could that appraiser complete in a week? Add in the economy of scale that justifies full exploitation of the technology, various databases, valuation tools and most importantly the uniformity of using the same people to do all the property inspection and ratings (on the inspection side) that is *completely* independent of the usage of that data by the appraiser on the valuation side.
I did the math for my county and figured out that if a title company or the MLS operator split the metro my county (everything west of the unincorporated areas of Valley Center, Ramona and Alpine) into maybe 6 regions and assigned a property inspector to each those individuals could divide their region into smaller chunks they could navigate in a single day. Then they could inspect/rate these properties from the exterior during the first week they were listed - and if/when they sold that data would be recent and ready to go without a whole lot of wasted effort - by a licensed appraiser - that the Zaio program had.
Meaning, the appraiser using a subject or comparable description has no say in its description and ratings - all they can do is incorporate that information into their analysis and use it. They can't "adjust" it to fit this particular assignment, they can't hide it's omission from the system if they choose to ignore it, and they're not in contact with anyone in the transaction except if they're personally verifying the details of a sale transaction. Everyone using that data is using the same data that has been rated by the same people who rated all the other data in their analysis. Regardless of the actual accuracy of any one datapoint it has the same effect on everyone who uses it.
Mu point is that the ramifications on the prior business models of what technology is increasingly enabling appraisers and their users to do almost cannot be overstated.
What do you think is going to happen when some title company figures out they can train someone off the street to go perform detailed physical inspections on the properties they are offering a title policy on, and they're handing that inspection to an appraiser they have hired to work out of their branch office?
If all one of these inspectors did was inspect, measure and photograph properties, how many of those could they complete in a day? If all their appraiser did was perform valuations and write reports - no phone calls for inspections, no working around some borrower's schedule, no transit to/from the neighborhood, no driving comps - no time spent on work that doesn't require our technical expertise as appraisers. How productive could that appraiser be?
If the company ran 2 or 3 inspectors to keep an appraiser busy how many of THOSE assignments could that appraiser complete in a week? Add in the economy of scale that justifies full exploitation of the technology, various databases, valuation tools and most importantly the uniformity of using the same people to do all the property inspection and ratings (on the inspection side) that is *completely* independent of the usage of that data by the appraiser on the valuation side.
I did the math for my county and figured out that if a title company or the MLS operator split the metro my county (everything west of the unincorporated areas of Valley Center, Ramona and Alpine) into maybe 6 regions and assigned a property inspector to each those individuals could divide their region into smaller chunks they could navigate in a single day. Then they could inspect/rate these properties from the exterior during the first week they were listed - and if/when they sold that data would be recent and ready to go without a whole lot of wasted effort - by a licensed appraiser - that the Zaio program had.
Meaning, the appraiser using a subject or comparable description has no say in its description and ratings - all they can do is incorporate that information into their analysis and use it. They can't "adjust" it to fit this particular assignment, they can't hide it's omission from the system if they choose to ignore it, and they're not in contact with anyone in the transaction except if they're personally verifying the details of a sale transaction. Everyone using that data is using the same data that has been rated by the same people who rated all the other data in their analysis. Regardless of the actual accuracy of any one datapoint it has the same effect on everyone who uses it.
Mu point is that the ramifications on the prior business models of what technology is increasingly enabling appraisers and their users to do almost cannot be overstated.
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