Going Mobile as an Appraiser-The Paperless Office

Becoming a Mobile Real Estate Appraiser and joining the paperless revolution!

Summary: Real Estate appraisers waste lots of time, energy, and money doing double and triple entry of data from an appraisal inspection. I discuss making the switch to using a mobile device like a tablet or mobile phone to complete the appraisal inspection data gathering and how much time, effort, money, and life is saved by doing so. If you'd like to listen to the podcast version, click here for the Real Value Podcast-Going Mobile

If you'd like to watch the podcast on YouTube, just click here to be taken to the Real Value Podcast YouTube version...
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So you’re contemplating going mobile! Or, maybe you’re already a mobile appraiser and are curious to hear another man’s view and opinions on utilizing mobile tools to get stuff done. Well, I have a few opinions on it so let’s chat!

In my experience, when appraisers are considering ‘going mobile’ they’re contemplating and struggling in 3 primary areas: the time cost, the training cost (which relates to the time cost), and the hard costs of investing in the tools. I strategically use the word investing because, as I’ll show you in this podcast, it is an investment that will return many hundreds, even thousands of times your actual dollars out of pocket to get started. Of course, there me be a few other sub-categories and concerns, but those are the 3 primary ones.

Going mobile implies an ancillary benefit that some use in place of the term ‘mobile appraiser’, and that’s a ‘paperless’ office. The term paperless implies that no paper is used, which is very scary for those of us addicted to paper, and trust me, I WAS!! It’s part of our cave person ancestry and DNA, the part obsessed with physical things like rocks, fire, sticks, and clubs. It’s also part of our desire to have a history and a paper trail, something tangible we can pull from the file to prove we actually did something, prove we actually existed on that day. Of course, I can put your fears to rest right now, going paperless does not necessarily mean that you don’t use paper. I joke every day that we have a paperless business while surrounded by folders and papers. We do, however, use a tiny fraction of the paper we used to use so a better term would probably be a ‘less paper’ office, instead of a paperless office.

So what does it mean to ‘go mobile’ in the appraisal business? Well, at its core it means giving you more of your life back, making you more efficient, saving tons of time, effort and money, saving lots of resources in the way of paper, ink, maintenance, and space, and ultimately, dragging you, maybe kicking and screaming, into the 21st century! Beyond that, it simply means utilizing todays technology to develop an opinion of value on a piece of real property. It means using a cell phone or tablet as a data gathering tool. That’s it, in a nutshell. Going mobile means putting down the folder or clipboard and, in its place, using a phone or tablet to do all of the things you used to do with pencil, pen, and paper.

Now, before we move forward and talk logistics, let me ask you a question. What if you were told that there is a paper shortage due to, lets say, massive forest fires in all the forests where tress are harvested to make paper and if you ate caught using paper out in public you’ll be fined by the paper police. Being the good citizen you are, you decide to do your part and stop using paper, at least in public. What would you do to comply with the paper ban, well you’d likely use the next best thing, which is some kind of device that you could draw on and make notes. Be it chalkboard, white board, or etch-a-sketch. You’d find another tool to gather the important site visit data to bring back to the office so you could then transfer the data to your trusted computer and begin working on the appraisal. Of course, all three of those options are ridiculous and unreliable right? Imagine you get in a car accident and your etch-a-sketch flies across the front car seat. Half of your sketch is gone, part of your notes about the floor coverings is garbled, and you’re simply out of luck. I kid, of course, because we both know you’d likely use an Ipad or some similar tablet to use at the observation even if you had no appraisal specific software on there. Even just using the notepad and drawing apps, you can draw sketches, take notes with your fingers, snap pictures, etc. All of your paper issues have been solved with that new tool and you’re in compliance with the paper police.

The reality is that, today, we do have those tools, but we also have very specific software on those tools to take pictures, gather interior and exterior data, draw sketches, make notes (handwritten, recorded, or typed) and its all designed with USPAP and the appraisal profession in mind. Every piece of data gathered at the site, if placed properly into the App or software on the tablet or phone, goes directly into your report when you get back to the office and upload the data to your computer, and I’ll talk a little more about how that’s done in a bit. Now, maybe you don’t care about the rain forests, paper usage, the paper police, or saving the planet, I get it, many people don’t, or at least tend not to think their personal impact is that great. That’s ok. Because the biggest issue with going mobile over using paper and pencil is not using less paper and ink, those are just happy benefits, the savings is merely Starbucks and donut money.  The real savings is life savings! It’s the savings that come from not having to double enter data, by that I mean, gather data at the sight and then come back to the office and re-enter that data into the computer. That’s called double entry and it’s a huge time and money waster. You snap photos at the site visit and then come back to the office, upload your pics to the computer or Dropbox, or whatever your process is, and then you have to import them into the report and drag them into the report. That’s double, triple, maybe quadruple entry. All of those steps take time and, in most businesses, time equals money and, more importantly, time equals life! Every minute and hour wasted touching things two, three, four times is time you aren’t spending doing other things. The other things you could be doing is maybe just another file, which we’ll talk about, maybe its spending time with your children, or hiking the Appalachian trail. Whatever you’d use your saved time doing, time is one of our most valuable currencies and I can guarantee, without a doubt, you’re throwing your most valuable currency right out the window if you’re still working the old fashioned way, with paper, pencil, folder and clipboard. So lets talk tactical and practical, lets go over what a mobile appraising day actually looks like.

Regardless of your particular workflow, if you’re like me, over the last 20 years I’ve tried a large variety of different workflows, scheduling variations, and systems to make my business work best for me. Nevertheless, we all have to do the same things, to some degree, to complete an appraisal. We accept an order, we create a file, we set an appointment, we go to the house and gather data, we come back to the office, we input the data, if we’ve pulled comps ahead of time we input those, make adjustments, write comments, pull maps, add vital stuff to the report to make it more credible and understandable, and we wrap up the file and send it. Again, your particular workflow may be slightly different, but the steps are all there. The difference between paper appraising and mobile appraising is in how many of those steps are collapsed into one process and where there is no double or triple entry of data. With mobile appraising, when we enter the order, either into the tablet or computer, its only done once. When we enter data from the site visit, its only done once. When we get pictures at the site and of comps, they’re only touched once and they’re in the report. And when we draw the sketch at the subject property, we only touch the sketch once and its in the report.

Now, we all work at different paces so time savings will be relative to how quickly or slowly you work. I’ve trained, coached, and counseled lots of appraisers and appraisal company owners over the years, all with varying speeds so I get that we’re all different. I can type relatively fast and I move relatively fast at the site visit so time savings for me on some tasks is a wash, and I’ll talk about that.  It’s the time savings on the process of transferring data from your folder or clipboard where things get very interesting. So lets talk about the process.

As I mentioned, the time savings in initial file setup and at the home is negligible, depending on your process and workflow at the site visit. I find I spend a bit more time setting up the order in the system than I did before and I spend a little more time at the home than I did before, but only a little more time. For example, I used to just print off the order, research the property, print off some comps and key info about the subject, and off I went with my folder and papers. At the subject property, I’m carrying my folder under my arm, my disto laser measuring device, and my camera. In the past, of course, I was carrying a real tape measure, one of the big 100 footers with handle and hook. 10 minutes set up before the site visit and off I went. However, back at the office after the site visit is when I would actually start the file in the system and start entering the data. I have staff now so I would just turn the file over to them and let them begin the file process from there.

Whether its me doing it or my staff, it takes time and steps to do each one of those processes. Since time is one of our most valuable currencies, and time equals money for all of us, anything that saves us time is also saving us money. Especially for appraisers, many of whom operate as the sole appraiser and staff person, anything you can do to shave off time and waste from your process is saving you in a variety of ways. You’re saving actual dollars like paper costs, ink costs, and most importantly, valuable time costs because again, time is money in our business and time savings equals life savings. When you shave off 15 minutes each day from a file, that’s 45 minutes of savings on 3 files per day. If you’re not doing 3 files per day, its still an hour and 15 minutes of savings per week from the most valuable currency we have which is our life hours. That’s an extra hour each week to spend with the kids, or in the garden, or in meditation, etc. That’s 5 extra hours per month and 60 hours per year you’ve saved yourself just by shaving a mere 15 minutes from each file due to changes in efficiency.

Maybe 15 minutes doesn’t sound like that much to you. Maybe 5 hours per month doesn’t sound worth it to you. But understand, 5 hours of time each month, at whatever your hourly rate of production is, is a direct savings in dollars each month (we’ll talk about the value of life hours in a minute). If your billable hours are around $100 per hour, which is typical in our industry (very low, in my opinion, but typical), then you’ve just saved yourself $500 that month. That just paid for your tablet. Next months savings will pay for your new laser measuring device if you’re not there yet. Everything after that goes straight to the bottom line. That’s $6,000 per year of savings, or $60,000 every decade, just by shaving off 15 minutes on one file. If you do 2 files per day, double every one of those numbers and you start to see significant actual dollars going straight into your pocket! $12,000 per year or an extra $120,000 in 10 years just by deciding to go mobile, becoming more efficient, and shaving off 15 minutes per file.

Let’s talk about the currency of time, or as I like to call it, life savings. Most people, when they hear the word ‘life savings’, think about the amount of money they have saved over time for their eventual retirement, vacations, medical care, a new roof, or whatever else they made need that nest egg for. What is often lost by using terms like ‘life savings’ when referring to dollars is the amount of life energy it took to create that amount of money. When we think of our income, we often only think about our salary, how much we’re paid, how much we earn per hour, or more likely, how much we as appraisers get paid per file. The danger in this way of thinking and what we tend to forget about is that, in earning those dollars per hour or dollars per file, we’re trading one of our most valuable currencies, which is our time currency. We all have the same 24 hours available to us but remember, most of us get +/- 8 hours of sleep at night so 1/3 of that 24 hours is already gone. If you spend another 8 hours of your life energy at work, you are only left with 8 hours for you! And are you really left with 8 productive hours? Absolutely not! If we sleep only 8 hours, we get up, have some coffee, read the newspaper or watch YouTube, or worse, scroll facebook and instagram for a while, use the bathroom, take a shower, get ready for the day and only then does your productive time start. You slept 8 hours, you woke up for an hour or so, and then you started in to your 8 hours of exchanging your life energy for dollars. When you’re done doing that, do you really have 8 more productive hours for yourself? Absolutely not! We already added on an extra life hour for wake up time, and the time at the end of the day is the time after some of the life has already been sucked out of you by work, by putting out fires, by using your mental capacity to problem solve, etc. Now all you want to do is relax, put your feet up, some of us hit the gym, we fellowship with family, we eat dinner, watch some tv or back to YouTube, facebook, and instagram until our eyes close and the cycle ends. We’ve essentially traded about 18- 20 hours of life energy for sleeping, working, eating, and typical daily tasks. That leaves us 4-6 hours of time to actually live our lives and do the things we want to do and be. That’s not a lot of time! 4-6 hours of time at the end of the day equals +/- 25 hours per week for ourselves. 100 hours per month to create the life we want to create. Of course, as we’ve already pointed out, it’s the least productive time in our day because its at the end of the day and its usually wasted on frivolous things like social media and sitcoms.

Now, why do I bring all of this up? I bring it up because when anybody is contemplating whether or not to make some kind of change in their process and workflow, they tend to think about the investment in hard goods like new technology (tablet, smart phone, laser measure, etc.) and then the time cost of slowing down to learn a new skill, maybe get behind a bit on files that have stacked up, and the frustration, stress, and anxiety that comes with any change.

However, until you take a 360 degree look at what the actual cost of some kind of change is, and by that I mean the life cost, you’ll never be calculating the true cost of anything. Saving 15 minutes per day on one file has valuable implications that impact your whole existence, not just the 15 minutes of time savings in your production time. That 15 minutes saved gets applied across the board and adds 15 minutes of valuable life time to your day. Since we really only get 4-6 hours of time each day for ourselves to spend with family, friends, creating, gardening, or working on that all important life project, 15 extra minutes each day is huge! 5 extra hours per month and 60 extra hours per year, when calculated based only on the ‘free time’ or life time after sleeping, working, bathing, eating, and just generally staying alive, that 5 extra hours created from a mere 15 minute time savings gets added to your valuable life energy time, the hours at the end of the day. So now, instead of 100 hours per month for you, you’ve got 105 hours.

Now, imagine doubling that so that your adding 10 extra life energy hours to your month. From a hard cost perspective, if you have staff and multiple appraisers working for you like I do, 15 minutes time savings per file is multiplied by the number of files you typically complete in a day, week, or month and the numbers grow exponentially.

The reality is that, after getting up to speed with the change in workflow, the added efficiencies that are created using mobile tools, your actual time savings per file will likely far exceed 15 minutes per file. If it was only a 15 minute time savings, I would still say to absolutely do it and I’ve just done all the math for you explaining why. My actual time and cost savings look more like this, however:
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By going mobile, I save +/- $50 to $100 per month in paper across all my printers, I save the same amount in printer ink (and use of the printer which eventually means buying a new printer or maintenance costs over time), I save a little money in not having to buy those cardboard storage boxes for files, I save tons of space by not having to store all those files somewhere AND the hassle of retrieving a file if we need to go back through the work file. Maybe those things aren’t a big deal for you but I ran a very large appraisal firm with a large residential and commercial devision where we had a whole room dedicated to copy machines, printers, and servers, and a whole other room, along with paid storage space to hold all the files we produced every month. Talk about a time waster, we had to get up and walk around the cubicle bullpen to go pull files and stuff from the copy machine every time we needed something. That may have killed an hour or more per day. After starting my second firm, which was half the size of the previous firm, we still had hundreds of file boxes, big expensive copy machines, and paper everywhere.

Since going mobile, literally no storage boxes, 1 100th the amount of paper (we still print off a copy of the order and that’s it), no storage fees for file boxes (which doesn’t apply to everybody, but you have to store them somewhere), no printer and copier ink or maintenance agreements (we scan any paper into the work file), and, of course, the time and life savings we’ve spent so much time talking about.

Now, what I did have, and what you will have, initially is the cost of the tablet $300 to $1000 (don’t need the most expensive), I highly recommend investing in a good laser measuring device and there’s lots of info on the web about the best ones for appraisers. You don’t need one with bluetooth and all the bells and whistles, but understand, the investment in bells and whistles, if utilized properly, can translate into more time savings which, of course, means dollar savings and more time to plant flowers. And then, of course, you’ll have the time investment in learning how to use each new tool and the time it takes to get used to a new workflow and process. I highly recommend using your after work life hours to practice using the tools so that you can still be productive during the day and get files out. If you trade just one or two social media and tv hours each night for just a couple of nights to learn how to use your tablet for mobile appraising, you’ll be flying in no time. One of the biggest fears, and complaints, I hear from appraisers regarding going mobile, is the slowing down and lost time and frustration of making the change. I completely understand this fear because I was the same way! I hate to disrupt my process and slow down which is what made me throw my first tablet into a golf course pond about 10 years ago. I got so frustrated, not at the technology, but at my lack of understanding of the changes in workflow and process that would be required to be successful at it. And trust me, it doesn’t take much to learn how to appraise using mobile tools.

So, I talked at the beginning a little about how I used to start files and head out on inspections. I’ll share with you now how we do it using mobile tools and how it saves us time and lots of money.

Now, when we get an order, we start the order in the software and merge it with our pre-built 1004, 1073, or 1025 templates so we have all the forms we need already in order.  We then go right to the assessing data and MLS and start saving PDFs of all the important legal info right into the work file of the report on the computer. We get the parcel number, legal description, prior sales, listing history, assessor’s sketch of the property, and any other pertinent data. This all gets saved into the reports work file, and of course, the parcel, legal description, and sales and listing history go right into the proper places in the report. Not one piece of paper has been printed in this whole process. Potential comps are researched and also saved into the work file in the digital report. When I’m saying work file of the report, I’m referring to the place or tab within the software that holds all our digital info like pdfs, assessing data, the order, pictures, maps, comps, anything you’ve scanned, etc. Mind you, this all takes mere minutes! Once you establish your preferred workflow in this regard, you’ll eventually fly at it. Also understand, you were doing all this anyways before you went mobile, you may have just done it at a different point in the process OR you did it and printed out the paper and put it in a file. I know some of you who still print stuff off and then scan it to pdf and put it in the digital workfile, to which I say, good for you for utilizing technology and creating a digital work file, but now go the extra step and just stop printing off the hard copy. Save yourself that extra step and extra touching of the paper. Create a folder on your computer desktop called ‘digital workfile’, or create a new folder for each address and then save all the digital files there, or, like we do, we have a folder on our desktops called ‘order staging’ where, when we do preliminary work before the order has even been created, we start saving stuff to that folder to eventually put into the workfile once the order has been created. Each day, all of the stuff on the computer Is being backed up to both a cloud storage service and an offline desktop storage system we each have on our desks. On my desk I have 10 terabytes of offline storage that info is being saved to continuously, in case you were worried about how stuff is saved and retrieved.  

If you’re also utilizing a comp data entry service like data master or your own MLS system’s service, if you’ve chosen your comps already, they can literally be imported into the report in seconds. Before you’ve ever left your desk to go to the site visit, you have the file started, all vital data saved in the workfile, parcel number, legal description, and sales and listing history in the report, and, if you so choose, all comps already in the report and mapped out (and by ‘in the report’, I mean already in the grid the way you like the info displayed). All of this, by the way, took 10 to 15 minutes, at most. Now, I don’t know how long it takes each one of you to complete a typical report, but understand that at least 50%, maybe even 70% of the report in this scenario is already completed before we even leave the office! We have everything we need to head to the site visit and get some of the most important data, which is the data from the observation. We upload all of the report data we’ve just collected to the cloud service our software uses, in my case its total for mobile, we download the file to our mobile devices, for me it’s a galaxy tab s3 (I’ve also use the iPad Pro 10.5 tablet), we open the file to check that all the info is there, and off we go.

I’ll tell you also that, in most cases where an assessor sketch exists, we not only put the assessor sketch into the workfile, we quickly sketch out the footprint of the subject into the sketching software and into the file. This takes all of 3- 5 minutes per file and allows us to get to the home and now we’re verifying the assessor sketch and dimensions and making necessary changes where we find them (which we do), as opposed to having to start the sketch from scratch at each house. 

At the home, we are taking pictures with the same device that the report is on (a huge benefit), putting them right into the report in all of our templated photo pages, taking notes on what we see at the property, entering the data into the report using all of our own quick lists for things like flooring, wall coverings, cabinets, appliances, etc. We’ve done it once and that’s it, it already in the report when I get back to the office.

The bottom line is that when we leave the property, almost 90% of the report might be complete. We go take comp photos, get back to the office, upload the file from the tablet to the cloud service, download it from the cloud service to the desktop, and begin your analysis, adjustments, and commentary, along with little things like labeling photos, pulling additional info like google satellite maps, and anything else you might do to add more credibility to your reports. Whenever we have a rush file, we submit the file to the cloud right from the driveway of the home and let the staff know its ready to be downloaded and cleaned up. When the appraiser arrived back at the office, they finish the critical work and send off the file. Literally files can be sent the same day they’ve been ordered and inspected with this method. Understand also that using a similar method and workflow, a typical appraisal takes about an hour to complete, not counting the time at the site visit, and complete well! Imagine you get an order for an address you just appraised 2 months ago, you can merge the old report info with the new order so you already have the sketch, the parcel, legal, neighborhood info, etc. You have to do your due diligence at the property and get updated photos and potentially updated comps, but this is easily a half hour report. Then you have the more complex files that may take two hours. These all average out, with our process and workflow to about an hour per report, give or take. If your average report fee is $400,  this is a billable hour worth $375 to $400. If you’re doing it all on your own, that’s all yours minus your costs and taxes. If you have staff (hopefully off site or virtual), part of that gets paid to them, but nevertheless, hopefully you’re seeing the most important reason to make the switch from the old paper and clipboard, double entry of data method, and start using mobile tools to be more efficient, effective, compliant, and profitable. Every 15-30 minutes of time savings is money in your pocket, more files completed in less time, less actual cost of hard goods like paper, ink, storage boxes, space in your house or office, better compliance and information retrieval by having everything literally at your fingertips with the keyboard, more opportunities to take on more work from your existing clients or take on some new clients, and most importantly, it gives you a little bit of your life back each day. The most important currency we have is the hours in our day and the life energy we spend each day living it. The more life energy you save by becoming more efficient, the more profitable you become because you make more money in less time and you have more time to enjoy it. One of the huge benefits we all experience as appraisers is a larger degree of control over our time than the average employee of a company. However, with great privilege comes great responsibility and that means learning how to maximize our time and become efficient as possible.

If your average fee is less than what I mentioned earlier, you can do the math to figure out what your billable hour is, but the point is to strive to get your billable hour up in $50 to $100 increments by creating efficiencies. It doesn’t all have to happen at once, by the way. I totally understand overwhelm and how being overwhelmed can keep some people from doing anything! Just start with one step in the process. If you haven’t made the switch to a laser measuring device yet, I would say start with that. You can go to the site visit with both the laser and your traditional tape measure and practice using both. You’ll always have your tape measure to fall back on in difficult situations or moments of frustration. The next step is to invest in a tablet, Ipad or Galaxy tablet are my recommendations, but there are others, and then start playing with the mobile software and data gathering tools that are out there. I suggest a tablet, by the way, over a mobile phone, for 2 primary reasons: screen real estate and market perception. The size of a tablet and the screen real estate is far more advantageous for taking notes, drawing sketches, and entering data, in my opinion. I know many appraisers who swear by their phones and to that I simply say, good for you for raising the bar and utilizing mobile tools. If it works for you, using a mobile phone over a tablet does not, in any way, make the results of your appraisals any less credible. I love the pictures my Galaxy note phone takes even over my tablet, but the second part of suggestion, perception, is what keeps me from recommending a mobile phone over a tablet. Let me explain.

As an appraiser, a teacher, an appraiser mentor, and as a business owner, I know that market perception matters. The perception of the homeowner, the realtors we work with, the lenders we work for, and those we’re teaching on a daily basis, using a tool like a mobile phone to complete an appraisal observation creates a perception in the market of appraising and appraisers that cheapens the process. Although not said, everybody knows that your mobile phone is your personal device. It may be used to conduct business, but you also use it to take pictures of your kids, talk dirty to your husband, wife, or significant other, surf the web, watch porn, text inappropriate things, and whatever else you do with your personal device. I’m not saying you all do all of those things with your cell phones, but almost everybody who has one perceives this particular device as your go to device for those activities. Not that you cant do all that stuff on a tablet, it’s simply that a tablet is often perceived by the market as the separate device used for business when you show up and tends to give the perception of specialization that a cell phone simply does not.  The cable guy has a special tablet he or she shows up with, we’re seeing restaurants using small tablets to take orders, IT professionals use tablets and small laptops, programmers use tablets and small laptops, and a variety of other industries are utilizing tablets to, not only perform specialized tasks, but to create the perception of added value in the mind of the consumer, as well as create an efficiency in their workflow. I’ll never tell anybody not to use their cell phone to do appraisal work because it means you’re ahead of the game and raising the bar. But I would encourage any appraisal business owners, and especially those who are training and mentoring others, to encourage tablets over cell phones if, for no other reason than market perception. We want people to see our industry as specialized and high tech, and worth every penny or more. Using a cell phone, whether you know it or not, reduces that perception in the marketplace because its known and perceived by almost everybody as your personal device. Tablets tend to be perceived in the market as being more specialized and for specific purposes when utilized by professionals

That folks, is my 2 cents on making the switch to mobile and less paper appraising. If this hasn’t been compelling enough to want to make the switch to using mobile tools, I would love to hear what it would take to make you switch.