Narrative Report Writing 3 - Using Templates

While there may be some appraisers who dictate their information, and have a hired report writer insert property data and information for them into a template, I have never followed that lead.  Report writing programs are also a way to go, they can “remember” what information needs to be changed in your reports for you, changing plurality, change property information and change other variables in a template for you.  Most of these programs use a search and replace (mail merge) function on a range of user identified template variables.

I am one of those commercial appraisers who write their own reports without dictating them and without using a report writing program.  Templates for those who do it my way are basically old reports that are customized for each new report, so there often a great deal to change.  If the current assignment is an office building I go back to the last few that I have written and select the one most similar to my current assignment.   

If you have read litigation filings or reviewed many appraisal reports in the past you can see just how bad following a template can make a legal filing or an appraisal report.  Templates have a serious downside, if enough things are different about the current appraisal assignment property from the template report that you would like to use, you are basically rewriting most of the report and the savings derived from the template can become nominal.

The age of an old report to be used as a template can also be an issue, as things change in your report over time old reports need more "updates."  If the old report was completed on a different property type (like an office when you are currently appraising a medical office) and the location is entirely different, you are going to be making a lot of changes.  If you are creating a report on a property adjacent to one you just completed, the savings (writing, research and analysis) may still be substantial. 

If an appraisal report that you recently completed was on an office building with a gross building area of say 25,000 square feet and the adjoining property that you just got an order on has 10,000 square feet, some of the potential time savings using the old report is lost.  The comparable sales don’t work, at least not in my market, so you are back to square one with the sales approach.  Depending on building similarities you may still benefit from your; market / neighborhood description and the research and analysis that you completed on rental properties.

It’s no secret that the most profitable appraisals are those that take the least effort to complete.  That’s why appraisers build databases of comparable sales, so that they don’t have to start from scratch with each property appraised, they can take the the comparable sales from the database and insert the appropriate ones into their next report.  Templates are like databases, if you complete a narrative appraisal report on a mini-warehouse and you are offered an assignment to do another a month later, maybe the one you did again for another party (possible with disclosures and assuming no confidential information is disclosed) you have a considerable portion of the work for the assignment already completed.  Sure you have to check and see if anything has changed in the market, like additional sales, rentals, etc. but most of what you need to do the new report is already in the template or in your work file from the last report.

It’s important to understand that using templates requires that a great deal of attention to detail, appraisers need to be focused on each and every section and realize that if you "skip" a section that you think has not changed you may have left some specific information about the last property in the report on the current property.  Appraisers must often read and re-read reports to make sure that they have not missed information that was specific to the prior report, whether it was a generic report or a report on another property. 

For more appraisal information contact Glenn Rigdon MA, MRICS, ASA is a Las Vegas / Henderson Nevada appraiser who can be contacted via email or via his business website Appraiser Las Vegas  (http://www.appraiserlasvegas.com), or you can also click on “Contact Us” on the home page of this website or visit my public profile at LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/glenn-rigdon-ma-mrics-asa/1a/30b/879/.  

Article source: http://www.appraisalarticles.com/Narrative-Report-Writing/4312-Narrative-Report-Writing-3-Using-Templates.html