Info Tech (IT) Is Revolutionizing the Appraisal Industry

The future has finally arrived here at Patrick F. Casey and Associates, Real Estate Appraisers, and not a moment too soon. Long gone are the days of film cameras, clipboards, and cumbersome big-wheel measuring devices. Today technology reigns supreme. The pencil, paper, and clipboard have been replaced by the stylus and hand-held, web-enabled Personal Data Assistant (PDA) . The film camera is also gone forever, replaced by digital photography and the megapixel, and the big-wheeled building measuring tool (that can't be used in the snow) has been replaced by the pocket-sized, laser measuring device which can give us accurate measurements without even getting near the building we are measuring. Imagine measuring the comparable sales without even getting out of the car; and getting more accurate answers to boot. Even the ubiquitous mouse and keyboard have been replaced by the auto-entry features of the stylus and PDA or new Apple I-Pad which automatically loads data into the correct place on the appraisal forms using our vendor's proprietary software and your finger. Who ever thought the mouse and keyboard would be obsolete this soon?

We can even deliver the completed report to the client electronically via the internet using our mobile wireless 3G internet connection. Perhaps the best news is that we can now do the entire appraisal report from start to finish including accepting the order and delivering the report to the client while we are still in the field. The client can have a hard copy of the finished report in his hands within minutes of our seeing the subject and comparables. Appraisal reports that use to take days can now be completed and delivered within hours.

I think I know what you may be thinking, all this sounds good on paper but realistically, how practical will all this new technology be for the average appraiser and, as importantly, how much are the "switching costs"? Nothing is worse than making a significant investment in technology only to discover that it doesn't work as advertised, is incorrectly designed in the first place, or is incompatible with our other technologies. The good news is that this "new" technology has been around for several years and in some cases for decades. Cell phones are now more common than land lines and computer tech is so cheap and easy to use that even very young children are now computer literate. The other good news would include the fact that software is becoming easier and more intuitive to use. DOS is dead, long live the Graphical User Interface (GUI). For you "newbies" out there the GUI was first introduced by Apple on their personal computers and was later adopted by Microsoft who call it "Windows" - you may have heard of it. Also on the good news side of the ledger is the fact that the overall costs of IT are constantly declining and so our hardware costs are now significantly less than what they were only several years ago.

The bad news is that these new processes will naturally involve the purchase of new hardware and of course the time we must invest in learning how to use it. We are investigating several of the new mobile platforms for these new procedures including Apple's new I-Pad, Netbooks, the ubiquitous laptop, the more popular PDA's, and several other point of sale devices. While no final decisions have been made yet I am confident that, like the digital camera, you will find that the coming changes will save you copious amounts of time, will be easy to learn, reasonably priced, and, most importantly, very profitable to use.

Below are links to the new tools we will be using:

All About Laser Distance Measuring Tools

Some Laser Measuring Devices