Happy New Year from all of us at Bradford Technologies!

2009 Year in Review

HVCC came in to being; appraisers gained their independence and lost half of their fees. Two conferences were held on “Reengineering the Appraisal Process” and Fannie and Freddie asked appraisers to show their market analysis work with the new 1004MC form. NAR announced a new initiative called RVM which stands for Realtor Valuation Model which they want to make the “gold standard for property valuation”. In 2008, 20% of orders went through AMCs, today, 80% of all orders go through AMCs. Some appraisers lost their business and others gained business. It was quite a year for the appraisal profession.

At Bradford Technologies, we focused our efforts to once again lead the industry in innovation, ensuring that you had the most hassle-free, productive year ever. We partnered with RELS Valuation to set the standard in appraisal transmission. How many times do you get a call from an AMC asking you to change something on the report? It’s a productivity killer. With the RELS Integration Module, your report is QA’ed before you send it – completely eliminating any turns. This is the way all AMCs will be receiving reports in the future. ClickFORMS users are gaining that productivity now. (look for more enhancements to this system in the near future)

Bradford Technologies also entered the Canadian market. We partnered with Centract, a major AMC in Canada. Today Canadian appraisers are using ClickFORMS for free as part of their valued relationship with Centract. Again, the integration between ClickFORMS and Centract is seamless; the turn times have been reduced and the appraisers are more productive.

When the 1004MC form became mandatory, we saw this as an opportunity to further improve your productivity. We took on the daunting task of building a market analysis service and ensuring it worked with over 750 MLS systems. We were successful and now ClickFORMS users are taking advantage of this enhanced productivity.

We didn’t stop there. Our team of engineers implemented the most sophisticated word processor into the recently released ClickFORMS 7.0. It is seamlessly integrated with carry-over comments and sets the stage for ClickFORMS to be used in small commercial appraisal jobs.

Still not finished, we released a new class of software called “Computer-aided Appraisal” software called CompCruncher. It’s not a form-filler – it's software dedicated to managing and analyzing property data. It’s so different we even created an education and training curriculum so we could teach you how to use the analysis tools with skill and confidence.

It’s a game changer because it allows you to analyze the market, determine the components of value and produce a supportable, highly reliable valuation in record time. If you haven’t looked into CompCruncher, we strongly encourage you to do so. Alternative valuation services such as AVMs and BPOs have taken a huge chunk of the valuation market away from appraisers – using CompCruncher technology you can regain some of that lost market share and we’ll help you do it. It’s over a billion dollar market and lenders would rather have appraisers doing the valuations than brokers. We are building a national network of appraisers skilled in producing Collateral Valuation Reports (CVRs) using CompCruncher. You can join or learn more about this opportunity at appraisalworld.com/CompCruncher.

As 2009 comes to a close and we look back over the year, it was a year of change for the appraisal profession. 2010 is probably going to bring more change. At Bradford Technologies, we are going to do everything we can to ensure that these changes have a positive impact on your appraisal business. We value your business and your support. We look forward to continuing to earn your business in 2010 and we wish you a Prosperous and Happy New Year.

New Word Processor Capability in ClickFORMS

Seamlessly integrated this completely intuitive word processor is powerful enough to enhance your residential appraisals or help you create detailed narrative commercial appraisals quick and easy.

New Word Processing functions such as Bold, italics and underline are now available on the Comment Addendum Pages. You can mix and match formats, enlarge, shrink and automatically flow text between Comment Pages. You can even copy and paste formatted text from Microsoft Word directly into the Comment Page. Images or charts can be pasted directly into the comments page as well.

ClickFORMS 7.0 also includes seamlessly integrated Carry-Over Comments. Simply type to the end of the cell or hit CTRL+Y to initiate carry-over comments. You can fully customize the comments title with the Carry-over Comments popup box shown below:

Note* ClickFORMS 7.1 was released this week to address a few minor bugs. Included in this version:

New Feature

Paste as plain text option has now been added to the Word Processor copy and paste function. This right– click option will paste what you have copied as plain text, with no formatting, tables or images. This feature is useful when copying from an MLS site or a website and you do not want the entire grid to copy over, taking up space or affecting your previous formatting.

Improvements and Fixes

• Signatures will no longer be removed from templates or cloned reports. (They were previously removed for your protection. Make sure your templates don’t fall into the wrong hands)

• ESC key no longer causes software crash

• SAVE AS COMMENT now appears on the right click menu of the Word Processor Comment page

• Text Justification functions restored to all cells

• PDF’s uploaded to RELS now display properly

To update your version of ClickFORMS go to bradfordsoftware.com and click the blue Download tab at the top of the page.

1004MC Service

In July we launched our new 1004MC Service and it has proven to be a huge success. Customers using the service have realized a huge time savings as well as excellent Return on Investment. One appraiser broke the cost down to just 60 cents per report.

A quote received from another customer states, "I'm saving hours every day with this new software. It's a no-brainer upgrade, every appraiser should have this."

If you have not already checked out the service you can find more information or watch a demo video at bradfordsoftware.com/1004mc/.

We are currently offering a 30-day money back guarantee on the 1004MC Service, so contact your sales rep today at 1-800-622-8727.

Holiday Business Hours

Our offices will be closed on January 1st. We'll be back on Monday, January 4. As always, our website is available 24/7 at bradfordsoftware.com and our store is open at shop.appraisalworld.com.