My name is Greg Wood. I am a Certified General appraiser with over 18 years experience. This post is the 3rd 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 2: Zaio Chronicles - The Summit.
Sometime in December (it seems like such a LONG time ago), I began the phase of my zone processing we lightly call “prescoring”. This is the process by which I take a huge file of properties (which now have photos and assessor data attached), separate them into market groups, confirm the assessor’s data, and mark each accordingly. The task is enormous, but if it’s not done correctly the basis for values, and therefore the values themselves, will be wrong.
I am actually fortunate in my choice of zones. There are large tracts of homes, most built in the mid-50’s, with some smaller (and more recent) tracts, and of course a heavy salting of remodeled and custom homes.
Determining the market groups is the most critical portion of this phase. My zone consists of 3 MLS areas, and they are very good market breaks. Additionally, I have subdivided two of the MLS areas, giving me a total of 5 basic locational groups. Because of how the Zaio software works, I am actually better off making more groups than less…at a later point,
I can connect market groups together as similar (using the same comparables and adjustments), or change these groupings as the current real estate market dictates. Most simply, if I were doing a single appraisal in the area, the market group is my pool of similar properties from which my comparable sales would be drawn.
Within my five basic groups, I have subdivisions of tracts (50’s, 80’s, remodel and custom, for example). I just counted, and total I have 27 subdivisions. It’s starting to sound like a lot, but remember I am trying to categorize every property in my zone…well over 12,000! (I know that I said 16,000 in an earlier post, but we’ll get to that later)
But we aren’t done. Within each subdivision, there is also size (all properties are automatically divided into similar size ranges, e.g. 1300-1599 square feet), style (1 story, 1.5 story, etc.) and type (R-Single Family Detached, R- Condo Townhouse, various commercial, etc.). So, my market group ends up looking like: SoWd50Tr - 1 story – R-Single Family Detached – 1300-1599
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Needless to say, there are now more than 300 market groups in my zone, and it is my job to accurately place each property into the appropriate group. It is an extensive and mind-numbing task, but essential to the accuracy and quality of the final appraisal. Fortunately, like I said, I have large tracts of similar homes, so many of my market groups have hundreds of homes in them. My work continues…..
On the good side, the people at Zaio and the other zone owners have been extremely helpful. There are training modules available which have been very helpful in shortening the learning curve, and in December we had a day-long live seminar in Los Angeles further discussing the process and the new software version due out this month.
Additionally, the Pocket PC software is also being upgraded. In both these cases, the Zaio folks listened to the zone owners when developing the new versions, and are making both much more user friendly, along with including additional features we requested.
A word about Zaio. I have never seen ANY company so instantly reactive to the concerns of their constituents. The Zaio zone owner’s forum is monitored by all the Zaio folks, and questions are answered within minutes.
A couple of months ago, I raised a concern on the forum – I was unhappy with one of the processes we were using. Within 10 minutes, I had an answer from Tom Inserra, the CEO of Zaio. When that answer didn’t completely satisfy my concern, I was asked to leave a phone number with Tom’s secretary (he was out of the office for the day), and he called me that afternoon and spent close to a half hour discussing my problem. The result…I understood the process better, partially answering my concern.
Additionally, as a result of my concern, there where changes made…within 24 hours. I have seen this kind of responsiveness again and again, from all levels of the Zaio company. All of them are accessible and responsive to requests, questions, concerns and complaints.
With over 500 strong-willed appraisers in the system, the forums are a constant flood of questions and answers, discussions about USPAP compliance, and suggestions to improve both the products and the process. All of these with the appropriate company people fully involved.
And improvements are constantly being made. This may have been Brad Stinson’s baby, nourished by the various folks at Zaio, but we zone owning appraisers are helping shape it into something much better than it was. This is a true partnership…there is no sense that we are just the end users. The zone owners have financial and effort commitments to Zaio and are treated and listened to with care and concern.
The result is a company and its products that are far beyond what was imagined even 6 months ago. We aren’t sitting by and letting the AVM’s, BPO’s and the rest steal our livelihood away. We are fighting back, challenging them on their own field with products that are superior to theirs.
My fellow zone owners impress me as very competent appraisers and businessmen who aren’t looking for an easy buck, but rather committed to building a company that is something to be proud of.
Author: Greg Wood - A Better Way Appraisal Service 1262 Beryl St #122 Redondo Beach, CA 90277 - Phone: (310)374-2055Toll Free Phone: (800)464-4705Fax: (310)943-1782 E-mail: [email protected]
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