My name is Greg Wood. I am a Certified General appraiser with over 18 years experience. This post is the 2nd in a series of articles on my journey as a Zaio zone owner. This is not intended to be a series cheer-leading for Zaio, but rather an honest portrayal of why I bought my single zone in Torrance, CA, and an ongoing diary of the ups and downs of bringing my investment operational. See Part 1: One Man's Journey.
I'm back from the Zaio Summit in Vegas. Wow! Last Wednesday night was the reception. We were introduced to the Zaio management team, saw a couple of examples of the high quality video ads we will have available for our local marketing soon, and then spent the rest of the evening quaffing adult beverages, munching on tasty hors d’oeuvres and talking to our fellow Zaiotistas.
Additionally, there were numerous guest appraisers, invited during the Valuation 2007 conference, who came to explore the Zaio world.I was able to speak to zone owners from Colorado, Florida, Washington, my own neck of the woods here in California, and of course to the Houston contingent led by Ken Verrett, 
the other “Zaio poster child” as Brian Davis calls us. (Brian should insert the photo he has of Ken and me after a hard day of geoscoring, so everyone knows what we look like—Ken’s the one with the tattoos. - click to enlarge) I was also able to speak briefly with Tom Inserra, Zaio’s CEO, as well as several others of the Zaio team.
We spent all day Thursday in a series of presentations. There is absolutely no way I can report on all the info we received, but I will try to touch on the high points. Most importantly, out of the 7564 zones in the United States, over 1400 have been sold. Those 1400 though, represent 50-65% of the prime mortgage lending areas in the country. Of the 500+ zone owners in the country, more than 200 were in attendance in Vegas.
We were introduced to Zaio’s new scoring software, Valytics 2.0. Zaio responded to many of the suggestions of the zone appraisers with this new tool, allowing the use of more than 3 comparables, and the inclusion of listings.
Additionally, there are some cool analysis tools in 2.0, including the ability to look at all sales in a market group over a period of time (say 1 year), adjust all the sales based upon the geoscoring of each, then graph the real price changes over that period. Once again, we have a tool that cannot exist outside Zaio…no one else has evaluated EVERY property in an area, so any non-Zaio spreadsheet analysis of price changes in an area can not be as accurate.
Valytics 2.0 will incorporate GPS. When the appraiser is standing in front of the property doing the on-site scoring, he will hit the save button, and the GPS position will automatically be inserted into the property record. Zaio executives have met with Google techs involved in their own GPS projects, and when this was explained, the Google guy said, “You will have something no one else in the world has!” Another marketing bonanza!
On the sales and potential sales sides, the acquisition of Realink and Kirchmeyer has given Zaio business relationships with over 450 lenders (all the better for selling you new products, my pretty!). Additionally, because of Kirchmeyer products, Zaiotistas will be able to offer a full cascade of products to our clientele…from AVMs (Real Info) through 1004s, and everything in between. Additional sales work has continued, including a soon-to-be full market test for a major lender. This will apparently involve a couple of new areas being brought on line in the next month or so, most likely to include San Diego and/or Orange Counties in California
Upgrades to the scorecard function were also announced. For those that don’t know, the scorecard tracks property sales within a zone, compares them to the scored value determined by the zone appraiser, and reports to both Zaio and the appraiser. This will give the zone appraiser the opportunity to fine tune his adjustments on a consistent basis, enhancing the accuracy of his reports.
Also, Zaio will be able to monitor each zone appraiser’s accuracy rate, and identify and mitigate potential problems early. The new features include an auto-generated email to the ZA when each new sale is received, comparing sale and scoring, and indicating percentage difference between the two numbers. Obviously since no one other than a Zaio appraiser has appraised every home in an area, no one else could benefit from such a system, even if they wanted to.
There was so much more….a jam-packed day impossible to fully describe here. Even beyond all the company generated info, there was a moment of discovery for me. I looked around the room and realized that these 200+ people are my partners. We exchanged ideas for improving each others Zaio and non-Zaio business, offered assistance to each other in our various stages of process, and generally basked in the glow of camaraderie only felt when we are all pulling in the same direction. I found my fellow Zaiotistas knowledgeable, interested and more than happy to put lender pressure behind us in our new venture. In short, a great bunch of people.
Author: Greg Wood - A Better Way Appraisal Service 1262 Beryl St #122 Redondo Beach, CA 90277 - Phone: (310)374-2055 Toll Free Phone: (800)464-4705 Fax: (310)943-1782 E-mail: [email protected]
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