What’s half-way between a Zestimate and a real appraisal? Lenders and borrowers are eager to get the benefit of the doubt of a full appraisal without the full-blown doubts incurred with an Automated Valuation Method.
Enter Zaio.com, which is building a nationwide database of drive-by appraisals — really driven-by appraisals. From the San Jose Mercury News:
Zaio started off as a little-known Canadian company founded by Brad Stinson, an appraiser who tinkered with software. Stinson, now vice president of business development for the company, still has an office in Calgary.
Although the company has a low profile, recent hires such as Douglas Vincent, former chief collateral officer with Countrywide Bank, and John Ross, former CEO of the Appraisal Institute, a national organization in Chicago, are making people take notice.
“Our goal is to have information on every home in America,” said Tom Inserra, president and chief executive officer of Zaio from his Scottsdale home. “We already have hundreds of photographers and appraiser trainees and are deploying them around the country quite rapidly.”
The photographers have been sent to 170 cities in the past two months, covering the territory and sending it back to Zaio’s servers. Although the cities of Mesa, Ariz., and Spokane, Wash., are completed, part of the first wave is the Bay Area, and Brentwood seems to be the start of an estimated 80 million homes that will eventually make up Zaio’s database by 2010.
Inserra said that many Web sites have taken aerial photographs of homes, but the system was lacking real-life photos. The information isn’t available to the public but to banks, insurance companies and lenders who will use the service to help determine appraisals objectively, he said.
Zaio’s workers are required to go through a background check, wear company ID and clothing and hand out pamphlets written in both English and Spanish to anxious homeowners. The company also alerts the police department they will be in the area.
“We don’t invade someone’s property or try to sell them anything,” he said. “We’re also the only company we know who will let the homeowners opt out. … If you call Google, they won’t take your Read more
