Appraisers collect and analyze the highest quality property, transactional, and financial data in the commercial marketplace. Consequently, how they store and retrieve that data varies widely. Some thumb through old reports, some utilize Excel or an Access DB. However, many use professionally-developed systems. What is the best appraisal software option today? Making the right choice really impacts your profitability and value. Therefore, here are 5 factors that drive the value of a commercial appraisal software program and database.
The platform is where your data resides. Critical platform questions are about reliability, velocity, and security. Everybody knows a tech guy. If your cousin’s boyfriend built a “custom” database for you in his spare time on a server in his garage, you can be sure that it will be flaky and worse over time. As a result, build an app on the cheap and it will end up costing hundreds of times more in maintenance than your original purchase.
Even some professionally-built systems are poorly engineered and supported. As a result, apps end up becoming a “Big Ball of Mud”without quality software developers. “… a haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape-and-baling-wire, spaghetti-code, jungle[i].” It’s unfortunately a common practice in software because it is the easiest (at first). You know your data is in a big ball of mud if the system is jittery, slow and needs frequent fixes. Therefore, you can’t extract your data in usable format for transfer to another system.
Data is the life-blood of a modern commercial appraisal practice. So mistakes in managing a commercial appraisal software program can be deadly. Amateur and one-off solutions are vulnerable to employee theft, technician errors, and hardware failures. Furthermore, muddy software built over five years ago can’t keep up with modern technology. Instead, choose a cloud platform with modern software designed for a cloud environment from the start.
Valuable data is consistent data. One appraiser labels a field one way and her colleague another. As a result, the data is not easy to search or use. Standards create reliability which makes the data more valuable. Also, standards make it easy to exchange data with others. Without standards, your world is small and the value of your data is minimal. Instead, maximize your data’s value with recognized standards. For example, the OSCRE (Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate) is unifying standards globally. At present the best standards for appraisers are the Appraisal Institute Standards (created in 2004) and the PUCS (Property Use Classification System) approved in 2016.
You may have good data. But if it takes a year of intense training to learn how to use a software program, you might give up before you see much value. In fact, many appraisers using professionally developed systems acknowledge that the learning curve is so steep and confusing they’ve never bothered to roll it out across the company. Clearly, commercial real estate appraisal is complicated enough. Difficult software tools only compound the problem. Consequently, an attribute of an exceptional software program is an intuitive design.
Work in one system to maximize your team efficiency. For example, some systems require manual extraction to copy and paste in a report. Others require syncing with Microsoft Word or Excel. It’s complex and risky to go outside the application to get the job done. Manual errors creep in, data gets out of sync, and bad information ends up in reports. Each program in the mix has it’s own update schedule. So, that makes it hard to keep all the parts working together. As a result, the best solution is a single system. Specifically, the commercial appraisal database and narrative appraisal report writing all happen in the same software application.
There is a famous saying that “stuff happens”. Theft, fire, flood, or server crash and you need to recover data. Consider this, when did you test your last backup? If your office floods or burns, how long will it take to get your business up and running again: a month, two, or never? Therefore, the best commercial appraisal software program is secure and easy to recover.
How does your current situation measure up? Is your data in a big ball of mud? Are you maximizing the value of your data and your time? With realquantum you can and here’s how:
[i] A Big Ball of Mud, by Brian Foote & Joseph Yoder, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
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About the Author
Dennis Dull, MAI, is a senior appraiser at Keller-Craig and Associates as well as the Chief Sales Officer for realquantum.
Realquantum is a SaaS company providing web-based real estate appraisal software and database products that accelerate the commercial real estate appraisal process.
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