Are Appraisers Obsolescent? The new URAR replaces the old URAR.  What’s the difference?

The old was designed for difficult, sparse data, and hand calculator analysis.  Nearly 50 years old in its original design, with minor changes.  Three comps on a “grid.”  Describe the neighborhood.  Use your trainer’s “adjustment sheet.”  Regurgitate and explain the uncertainty and “most weight is put on the best comparable.”  And.  “The other two recognized approaches are not used because they are not useful . . .”

Changes came.  Word processors replaced typists’ typewriters.  Pictures pasted, not glue-stick stuck.

The appraiser’s job was to wade through the data source (MLS or other).  Drive by five or six, get it down to three or four comps as quickly as possible.  Adjust.  Print.

And now. 

Now we have a form which guides what?  It replaces 12 legacy forms.  It standardizes responses.  Fixed responses.  Less of that troublesome appraiser judgment!  More clarity!  More detail.  Useful?  Sometimes.

More structured data enables more structured analysis.  Less opinion.  Like an AVM.  No need for that peculiar credible judgment thing!  Just the facts.

But there’s a problem . . .

Not every valuation problem can be solved by ever more and more controlled data.  In fact, it seems one thing is being overlooked:

The underlying simplicity of the valuation problem.

For example:  For a SFR, the valuation model and its correlated algorithm is a part of the opinion development.  Some human has to choose things:  1) frame the problem;  2) identify the relevant data set;  3) choose the model to apply; and,  4) explain the process and conclusion.  A human has to do this.  It might be an appraiser.  It might be the loan officer who is sure this is a house.  Or the computer programmer who was told to pretend it is always a house.

Someone.

The best valuation includes expert human judgment, programmed code, and connection.  The connection is between the human brain, the artificial brain (AI), and the algorithm or code.

The UAD 3.6, new URAR is a report form, guided through choices, replacing the choice of property type “form” in the past.  It mostly forces compliance to standardized data.  MISMO and UAD 3.6.  It also replaces the form choice to an electronic one, instead of order-form box . . .  That’s it.  3.6 provides no “modernization” of analysis, and no refinement of analytic thinking.  The detail is just … detail.

The detail (the UAD 3.6) may occasionally improve appraisal thinking, and judgment, and opinion.  Occasionally.  Most of the time, it just requires more data collection and data entry on the part of the appraiser.  A little bit.

What is missing is modernization of analysis!

The analysis of today requires the science of data.  This science includes and requires the human expert – the appraiser.  The appraiser: knowledgeable in critical thinking, data-centric methods, and the ability to integrate traditional, proven appraisal stuff.  And, the correct visual and number stuff:  Stats and Graphs.  And AI prompts, properly used.

Join us, at Valuemetrics.info and the CAA.