The pandemic has forced the appraisal business into a surreal experience: many valuation professionals had their physical connections to the market severed or diminished. The question became: how best to assign value to the properties that appraisers are tasked with assessing especially while the demand for valuation has grown. Where does the rise of automatic valuation systems (AVSs) fit in with the valuation process? Karl Finkelstein, vice president of Business Development and senior managing director for Valbridge Property Advisors, spoke recently to REBusinessOnline. He explains, “The appraisal business is still all about reporting on what we see in the marketplace. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is our physical connection to the market — talking with market participants and attempting to read the tea leaves.” As for many companies, the past few months have been a time of reassessment and reengagement with the technology and tools at hand. “We’ve had to rethink how we do inspections; we’ve had to rethink how we physically interact. Technology has given us a big hand with that, and it has changed some of the some of the ways we do business and enhanced others,” says Finkelstein. A Hands-On Business, Socially Distanced Physical inspections remain …
