Appraisal Software Market

Safi Haidary

Real Estate Appraisal Principles, Practices, and Report Writing v.2

1/14/2013                                                             

Appraisal Software Market

                There is five main aspects to compare appraisal software. While every appraisal software can create an appraisal report, I believe that cost, form filing  user friendliness, office management, and mobility are the main features I want to compare when shopping for an appraisal software. Even though there are a lot of available appraisal software in the market, I decided to focus my essay on two appraisal software - Wintotal and ACI.

             ACI2010 UAD that includes ACI2010™ License, Appraisal Forms Library, Order Tracking, Photo Management, Comps Database, GPAR™ Forms Series, ACI sketch, Digital Signature, Free PDF Creator, 500 Choice Credit, Market Conditions Addendum eService, Bing™ Maps, FloodInsights, Pictometry, PDF Import, AppraiserBASE¸ with services of toll free support, eService delivery, Already, and ACI software update is $899 dollars. For the same price of $899, Alamode offers WinTOTAL Enterprise which contains formfiller TOTAL 2011, over 500 forms, automatic flood and census data, unlimited location maps, integrated comps and images data base, TOTAL Sketch, Xsite, and Xsellerate integration. I tried a lot to see if I can find any information regarding any kind of toll free support for WinTotal Enterprise, but it was not specifically mentioned any where in their website. Because I am new to appraising, I don't know most of the terms that are used as their software details. Since the package prices are both the same, It looks like there is a big competition between these two different appraisal software.

               Speaking of competition between Wintotal and ACI2010, form filling is one of the good features of appraisal software that via access of a web based data base like MLS we can easily import desired data to our form and apply to our appraisal report. Avoiding typing errors and saving typing time is two of the advantages of a form filling software. As per their website advertisement, both Wintotal and ACI2010 argue that their software has excellent form filling features.

                When it comes to using any kind of software, user friendliness is a big aspect of any software. Since appraisal software involves a lot of data entry and process, user friendliness plays a big role in making it easy to use the software. If an appraisal software is not user friendly, appraiser quickly become bored and it takes a lot of time and confusion to finish the report. At the same time, if a software is user friendly, an appraiser easily finish a report. From my experience, I could download a free version of WinTOTAL and over all I liked it. But for PC requirements purposes I could not download ACI2010 to see how it works.

               WinTOTAL looks like to have unhappy clients as far as office management is concerned. Based on the researches I did, I found out that there are frustrated clients because of WinTOTAL’s office management  If you are interested to read the posts yourself, please click the continuing link, http://appraisersforum.com/showthread.php?t=107977. Though ACI365 is a very complete package of office management. The only downfall is that you have to pay a separate $299 to buy the software.            

               Recently, appraisal software makers are competing to add mobility into their software. As a nature of appraisal process, appraiser is supposed to take sketches  photos  and extra note of subject property. That is why software companies create applications so that sketches, photos, and additional information from subject property is taken with mobile devices and then uploaded to the report upon arrival to office. As per “http://www.aciweb.com/blogs/press/archive/2012/05/14/aci-announces-mobile-technology-for-appraisal-software-users.aspx” , ACI announced its mobile agreement and availability for ACI software users to be able to update information from subject property to report in office.  WinTotal also has mobile applications for mobile devices to get information from the subject property while inspecting the subject.                      

               In conclusion, both ACI and WinTOTAL has all five features. Even though initial cost of both competitive packages are the same, ACI will cost you more if you want to add office management capability. Both software has form filling capabilities  though WinTOTAL’s clients look to be unhappy of WinTOTAL’s office management capability, but both software has mobility as far as connection to tablets and mobiles are concerned. At the end, I would say that ACI is better for its office management and WinTOTAl for its price.