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Zaio Selloff

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c w d said:
I know better than to say this.....but you guys ought to think about not kicking someone when they're down. Whether or not Zaio is/was/will be a good investment, the folks that did invest took a chance. Give 'em a little respect will ya?
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I have a friend that purchased multiple zones many years ago. His only benefit from the process to this point is the improved health from all the walking. That is a substantial benefit which should not be minimized, but it is not what he desired when making the investment. I did not think it was a wise investment at the time, and I have yet to see anything that would change my mind. I am not making any comments now that I have not made in the past.
 
c w d said:
I know better than to say this.....but you guys ought to think about not kicking someone when they're down. Whether or not Zaio is/was/will be a good investment, the folks that did invest took a chance. Give 'em a little respect will ya?
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Zaio's purpose was to put me and many other appraisers out of business or, at the very least, come out with a product that was designed to undercut my product and take as much of my business away from me as possible. Now that they are down, not only am I going to keep kicking them as hard as I can, I will be enjoying every second of every kick.
 
timd354 said:
Zaio's purpose was to put me and many other appraisers out of business or, at the very least, come out with a product that was designed to undercut my product and take as much of my business away from me as possible. Now that they are down, not only am I going to keep kicking them as hard as I can, I will be enjoying every second of every kick.
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That's one way to look at it. The other way is that they were just playing the Zone Appraisers for suckers.

Look, I've heard various estimates of how often, on average, a house get's appraised. If we are talking about a full appraisal - it's somewhere between 8 and 17 years. In my area, a lot of homes are paid off or so near paid off that reappraisal is not an issue. There are times when interest rates are relatively low and the market is hot and there are times like now. I believe that 12 years is a good average. If a Zone Appraiser can get 25% of the appraisals in his area, then I would expect that about 1 out of 40-50 homes in his zone will require a full appraisal every year or something close to that. He gets a 40% split and has expenses on top of that. So, say he clears $100 per appraisal. For one zone that's about 225 appriasals a year or $22,500. Also Zone Appraisers are supposed to get additional income from other related uses of the information they collect. But averages are averages. There are good times and bad. However, the Zone Appraiser has to continually monitor all homes in his zone regardless of the market. When the market is down, he doesn't get paid for the work he does. When it's hot -... monitoring is going to get in the way of getting work done. It's a PUSH system. It also pushes them to do low quality work. It doesn't make any sense at all. ... Only if they think they can completely dominate the market.

As someone said in an earlier post, Zaio Appraisers PAY for their responsibility. They live in a world where there is no such thing as quid-pro-quo. They are the Extreme Athletes of the profession, the ultimate appraisers who do ALL the work and get nothing in return. For them appraisal is a kind of sport they do for enjoyment - like those who run ultra-marathons across the deserts and through the mountains. On the surface, it may sound cool and macho to some, but for most of us with bills to pay, it is really just a recipe for a tortuous existence in an upside-down world. And given the historical success of Skippy, we know that Zaio COULD work for a period of time and cause unwelcome disruption ... we we are completely justified to bring the nonsense to a halt sooner rather than later.

Bert Craytor, SRA
 
Steven Santora said:
I thought that is what they did. Some fellow bought 35 zones way back when that was probably a handsome percentage of total sales, and they made him CEO.
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And obviously, business development skills had nothing to do with what it takes to be a Zaio CEO. And if the rest of the Zaiotistas follow the leader? Zing! Right into the trash compactor goes the investment money! :clapping:

Now let's see the track record again, from July 2008 back and how many clients were landed, what sort of step by step logic was in the business development plan, how cohesive were the various system components (photography, geoscoring, return on investment required to keep data maintained, etc. ), what areas were proven as test cases to assure business model validity for new zones being photographed month after month, year after year, blah blah blah.

The answer to all those questions is that Zaio does not have qualified business development talent running it and the business development has always had immense incoherence, question and incompleteness to it.

What Zaio does have is a team of semi-retired appraisal industry beurocrats looking for a lucky break, trying to start up an innovative and high risk venture with apparently no capacity to understand the challenge. They show every sign of assuming entitlement. Where are the checks and balances to the Zaio BOD?

Maybe checks and balances had something to do with the massive stock trading last week. Hope so.
 
It never made sense from the beginning. The numbers didn't work. The pre-appraisal concept...none of it. My first impression, that I posted here here a long time ago, was that they were hustling zones to individual appraisers because they lacked the savvy to understand the concept was not practical, reasonable or business worthy. If the plan was viable a large financial institution would have been the first investor and appraisers would been hired to construct zone databases. They would have had the most to gain and it would go "hand in hand" with there collateral valuation needs.

To me, the business appeared to be to sell zones and nothing else. I figured management would bail sometime before it became apparent that the business plan was not viable. I guess by acquiring the AMC and software company with the capital generated from zone sales they thought they perhaps could transition into a sustainable business.
 
The Wizards of Oz knew it all along.
 
Timothy Evans said:
$9,000 would go a long way with Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig.
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$9K can buy a whole lot of years worth of gym memberships. Or you could sign up at your local martial arts school for a few years and get your black belt/sash for less than $9K, with plenty of room to spare.
 
I personnally want to thank those that bought zones. Zaio had a good streak for a short period of time.

Remember years ago on this Forum many were doing very good in Real Estate. Some knew when it was time to bail, other didn't.

Lets just look at Appraisers. WOW!! IF I had more trainees I could turn out more work. I 'lll need more office space I'll buy that condex. ( I got friends in the lending industry) I can cut the fees, I get 30 40 50 60 % of what the trainee turns out anyway & he/she wants to be just like me someday. Hey I got the CREDIT I'll buy that little two sitter BMW. Those Trainees will flip!!! I got these Trainees, I'll do a two week vaction in HA. I'll take my laptop & sign the reports, I'll use Master card 'It's deductible" my Visa is at max!!

(Sound familar miss H.)

Then there is the other Appraiser I just take the work I can handle, charge full fee, Invest 20% of my income, when the tide turns as it always does in R.E. hopedfully I can keep enough clients to hold on but IF I can't I have some saving's to get me through till something else comes up.

Some times you win, sometimes you loose.
 
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