APPRAISER SPOTLIGHT

Jonathan Miller: "WinTOTAL is
the core of our
valuation efforts."

The only appraiser to become the national media’s go-to expert on valuation, Jonathan speaks with authority and credibility.  So we’re naturally thrilled that he refers to us as the “business engine” behind his high-volume, high-tech firm.  Here's what he has to say about our solutions:  

"We’ve always pushed against convention, embracing technologies before our competitors did so that we’d be more efficient and profitable.  As a matter of fact, until we moved to the a la mode platform, we had coded our own custom software to solve specific challenges from our unique housing market.  But the industry changed so rapidly over the past five years that we needed help.  We looked at the appraisal products available and decided to move our business to a la mode, which carried our technology torch but was much more cost effective than doing everything ourselves.  

WinTOTAL is the core of our valuation efforts.  It’s really our business engine.  We run our company on it and it works as advertised. It helps us with efficiency and also helps us maintain the highest level of quality that our clients expect.  Specifically, we’re huge fans of the comp side-by-side comparison interface in WinTOTAL.  It allows us to look at a large number of adjusted sales at once. 

When appraisers ask me what we use to run our company, I always say WinTOTAL.  It’s “real-world” tested on a highly productive office like ours, and I enthusiastically recommend it. 

With powerful software like WinTOTAL, we get more time to focus on the analytical valuation part of our job, which is far more important (and more fun, actually).  Reduction of the clerical demands of appraising is so important, and it’s a huge benefit of using WinTOTAL. 

Another benefit of a la mode’s products is that they’ve helped adjust our business when needed, too.  I was very public on my blog and podcast about the coming credit crunch back during the middle of the decade.  I knew it was going to end badly so I made a conscious decision to aggressively reduce our over-dependency on appraisals from retail banking clients and develop new sources of business.  As a result, our firm has been contrarian to the industry trend over the last three years -- it’s been a strong period for us.  Our a la mode software has been an important part of that success."