HOW FUSEGIS HELPED AN APPRAISER CUT $500 OF COST ON A $97M SALE REPORT AND BOOST OUTPUT BY OVER $10,000 PER MONTH
INTRO
Elizabeth is an appraiser and her job involves a lot of research.
She spends hours investigating multiple websites to find the information she needs about each property. These properties include numerous parcels of land and no easy way to visualize all those parcels on a map without cross referencing other lists. Previously, there have been no affordable mapping system that would make it easy to filter tax plats by ownership, zoning, floodplain, etc.
In this case study, we’ll show you how Elizabeth used FuseGIS to streamline her process on one of the most talked about sales in the past year in the Austin MSA.
ABOUT ELIZABETH
Elizabeth’s role as an appraiser is all about providing opinions of value. She specializes in large complex land assignments within an urban setting, and is licensed as a Certified General Appraiser. She typically does four to five appraisals a month ranging in fees from $1,750 to $5,000 and they take two to three weeks to complete. In order to estimate the value of a subject property, she provides detailed write-ups of sale comparables.
Elizabeth knows that if she is able to provide her client with an amazing level of detail, she’ll be able to make a more accurate valuation analysis of the property. Rather than the typical “upward/downward 5-10%” qualitative adjustments, Elizabeth can offer a more credible opinion if she can extract quantitative adjustments for City of Austin Fully Developed Floodplain, which is generally not developable.
THE CHALLENGE
The biggest problem Elizabeth faces is gathering the information she needs to do her job properly.
Without a centralized database for all the information, she finds herself having to compile all the information on her own - which takes hours and hours of work. FuseGIS makes an appraiser’s job much easier by putting all this information together into an intuitive, easy-to-view, interactive map format.
“I am appraising a piece of land that totals over 1,000 acres,” explains Elizabeth. “My comparables are located in Travis, Hays, and Caldwell counties in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA.”
“Commonly, sale information of large tracts of land is hard to come by and would take me days to compile the information I need to properly write up these comparable sales for a credible analysis. I also need visual comparisons to properly estimate adjustments to my comparables and also assist the reader in knowing what the comparables look like, but these are non-existent.”
Previously, Elizabeth spent hours researching multiple websites to find the information she needs. For example, for this sale she would have to reference Travis Central Appraisal District and manually draw out the property on Austin Property Profile to identify the sale appropriately.
She would then have to make do with a gross estimate of the floodplain, due to the limitations of the measurement tool in Austin Property Profile and the inability to zoom out far enough to outline all floodplain areas.
“The best I have is plat maps and aerials,” Elizabeth explains. “Any other info I want to see requires using mapping services that lack a lot of data, are difficult to use, especially when zoomed out, are extremely slow, and not visually appealing.”
Typically, it would take at least an hour and several print-outs to accurately determine which tax plats are related to the Tesla sale. The write up would take approximately 4-6 hours without FuseGIS. It would be much more difficult to figure out a percentage in the floodplain and Elizabeth would have had to make a guess about the amount, leading to limitations in her comparisons to the subject property.
For an appraiser striving to offer an accurate valuation, the lack of detail available to put into the information is very frustrating.
THE SOLUTION
FuseGIS transformed the appraisal process for Elizabeth and allowed her to produce better and more complete appraisals in less time.
“With FuseGIS, I am able to load incredible layers of information visually, more accurately write up a sales comparable for my appraisal, and make much better adjustments,” she explains.
Data that would typically be in multiple formats (including PDFs) across different websites, is all in one place and normalized. Thanks to this, researching properties becomes an incredibly quick and consistent experience. Users can toggle data layers on and off and search for specific properties to help with research.
FuseGIS also features links to specific government websites or regulations to direct users to the information they are looking for.
THE RESULT
Thanks to FuseGIS, Elizabeth is now able to produce a much better appraisal report in less time.
“I was having a lot of trouble with writing up the Tesla sale acquired in July 2020 for $97M.” she says . “Thanks to FuseGIS, I was able to write up this comparable in less than an hour! My client was extremely impressed at the quality of comparables I used and the detailed analysis I went into on each adjustment.”
Since Elizabeth bills at $100 per hour for bank appraisal work, that saved her $300-$500 in time. Just the savings from that one sale alone paid for 6-10 months of FuseGIS’s monthly cost. Using this tool across all her appraisals, she can now take on more volume and complete five to six appraisals a month increasing her annual production by $10,000 to $20,000.
Elizabeth’s business is now taking on more volume, as she is able to complete appraisals faster and offer her clients a better quality finished product.
SEE HOW FUSEGIS CAN IMPROVE YOUR RESULTS
Would you like to learn more about how FuseGIS can help you save time and do more accurate appraisals?
Visit our website for more info at fusegis.com, or email us at team@fusegis.com. You can also try FuseGIS for yourself with a 30 day risk-free trial at fusegis.com/subscribe.