Kairos Living

Q&A with Phillip Yates, VP of Operations & Head of Leasing & Marketing How Technology Sets Us Apart from the Competition Q: To begin, tell me a little about Kairos Living? A: Kairos Living began operations in July 2019 based out of Chicago. We are a vertically integrated real estate company that handles all aspects of property ownership and operations from sourcing and acquisitions to renovations, leasing and property management. We currently operate in 17 states and over 60 MSAs with a portfolio fast-approaching 2000 single-family homes with more on the horizon. Our biggest market is Oklahoma City, followed by Amarillo, Birmingham, then Dallas. We are also in Houston, Atlanta, and Fayetteville, to name a few. Our approach to utilizing progressive technology eliminates the need for local offices allowing for more freedom to expand our target markets. Our remote structure also significantly reduces the overall cost of the operation. We run a lean but efficient staffing model with just over 40 employees. Q: How long have you been involved and focused on the New Construction niche of the industry? A: Our original sourcing strategy was based on the renovate-to-rent model. As the pandemic hit early last year, we anticipated and quickly shifted our approach to focus on new construction homes acquired through several strategic relationships with national and regional builders. Q: What attracted Kairos Living to New Construction homes? A: The appeal for new construction homes is four-fold. The ability to capture higher rent due to a more desirable product for renters, lower R&M and capital expenses with builder and manufacturer warranties in place, lower turnover costs with superior building products and workmanship, and lower property taxes initially captured. Q: How and when were you introduced to PlanOmatic? A: Our Leasing Manager, Elizabeth Erikson, had used PlanOmatic at a prior company with great success and knew they would be an essential partner for us to successfully grow our portfolio. Consequently, we have been using PlanOmatic since the start in 2019. We consider PlanOmatic a Premier partner. The team at PlanOmatic has been extremely engaged and very responsive with the continued expansion of our processes as we grow. They are eager to find new ways to personalize services, reduce turnaround time and provide a superior product for us to hit the market. We greatly value the impact they bring to our business and really see this as a long-term partnership for years to come. Q: Can you describe how you use the PlanOmatic technology, specifically the 3D Tours? A: We currently utilize the full stack of services from PlanOmatic to help run our business, from new construction inspections using Property Insights to dynamically marketing our homes with Interior/Exterior Photos, Digital Floorplans and of course 3D Tours. Marketing a home is a lot like selling a great novel; the goal when a reader picks up the book is to be drawn into the story and visualize themselves engaged with the content. The more dynamic and accessible the book is, the higher probability you will capture a sale. The same goes with property marketing. For most renters, the point of origin starts online when looking for a place to call home. As you compete against other products, it is crucial to utilize every advantage in your arsenal. 3D Tours with PlanOmatic has done exactly that for us; making a defining statement online and hooking the prospect to tour in person. We see a visible ROI from increased lead generation and overall app volume. Q: Is your focus on technology a key distinction between Kairos and your competitors? A: Yes. Kairos Living sees technology as a key path to achieve a competitive advantage and differentiate ourselves from other industry players by leveraging that tech in every aspect of our business, empowering us to abandon the traditional “boots on the ground” ideology and embrace more of a centralized operating model. Proptech is still young in the SFR sector, but we see that changing everyday with new and seasoned platforms that have been servicing multi-family for years gaining large appetites for SFR growth. Our centralized model allows us to be agile, presenting as the ideal group to partner with as these platforms present themselves. Kairos Living’s success will continue to go hand-in-hand with a culture of innovation and embracing new technologies all while still providing a great experience for our Residents. For more information, you can email Phillip at pyates@kairosliving.com or visit kairosliving.com.

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Increase Value of your SFR Portfolio with Rent Protection Insurance

Improve Your Bottom Line by Offloading Risk by Adam Meshekow Every real estate investor can recall with great clarity and detail a time when a defaulting tenant caused thousands of dollars in damage to an apartment or home rental. While infrequent occurrences, when they do happen, they can ruin an otherwise strong annual financial performance. In a year of unprecedented rent default and massive unemployment, missed rents and bad debt have reduced portfolio returns and humbled investors and operators alike. Furthermore, Rent Reform continues to gain traction across the country, with many sponsored bills coming to statehouse floors in the coming months. The CDC eviction moratorium—an extreme example of rent reform—may wind up costing owner/operators billions of dollars in lost rent. In the midst of all of this adversity, new and innovative rent protection products are helping to deliver economic value and true risk transfer to the SFR industry. Let us start with security deposits, which have been used for generations to limit the amount of risk that a landlord takes when renting out an asset. In most jurisdictions, landlords are required to follow strict rules and regulations governing how large of a deposit they can demand, how to hold cash deposits, and for what they can be used. The process of administering, accounting for, and returning security deposits represents a cost center for landlords across the country, costing $35-$60 per door per year to manage. Landlords have been self-insuring bad debt through the use of cash deposits for generations. This form of self-insurance is useful to cover a small loss or minimal damage to the asset, but fails to cover most losses resulting from skips and evictions, such as rent, utilities, late fees, legal fees, etc. Much of the innovation in rent protection and security deposit replacement insurance is being driven by rent reform. New rent reform legislation limiting the amount of cash deposits and requiring landlords to offer insurance alternatives has passed or will pass in cities such as Atlanta, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and New York. The good news: these new products truly are a win-win for both the operator and the resident. Residents are feeling the pinch from COVID-related loss of employment and reductions in income. Liquidity is at a premium today and residents are loath to fork over one month’s rent to a landlord and have it sit in the bank. Cash security deposits are a highly inefficient use of capital and a poor form of self-insurance when compared to these novel soft-capital products. Security deposit replacement insurance products allow landlords to enjoy as much and often more coverage than what a traditional cash deposit provides and allows the consumer to finance the cost over time by paying a low monthly fee. For example, let’s say the rent on a single-family rental in Florida is $1,800 per month and the landlord wants a $2,500 security deposit to cover damage, utilities, rent, and legal fees. In lieu of cash up front, the resident could pay roughly $25 a month in insurance premiums. Allowing the resident to pay overtime at a rate of approximately 1% of the cash security deposit per month is a true win/win for both the owner/operator and the resident. It gives the resident flexibility to move in without having to come up with all of the cash required, it saves the owner-operator around $50 per door in security deposit administration, and it allows the owner to have almost 50% more coverage in the event of missed rents and fees and damage. When applied across all properties, security deposit replacement insurance improves portfolio value by increasing occupancy, reducing vacancy loss, and improving overall NOI. Owners/Operators across the country are embracing this type of insurance technology across multifamily, student housing, and single-family rentals to boost NOI as much as $900,000 per every 1,000 doors. There are not many products out there that can have this type of impact on your bottom line by offloading the risk to someone else so you can focus on growing the value and operations of your assets.

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Single Family Rental Strategies in a Hot Market

Act Quickly, Honestly, and Decisively by Adam Stern The residential housing market is HOT. Inventory is down in all major markets acrossthe country, prices have risen precipitously for consecutive years since the late 2010’s, and the influx of capital into the rental housing space has been steady and ever increasing. Low inventory, cheap money, and the driver? People are renting homes at a faster pace than ever before. The confluence of these market factors could make it hard for incumbent firms with existing rental property assets to acquire new homes and make it difficult for newly emerging investment firms to find an entry point into the asset class. It all comes down to strategy. As a broker that has been focused on identifying capital sources active in the Single-Family Rental space and, on the flip side, identifying, engaging, and servicing those who own, manage and build rental housing, my firm, Strata SFR, has a unique perspective of the various strategies that firms employ across the country. Since Strata does not generally act as a principal in transactions, the velocity of our movement in the space is extremely high vs investment firms that generally stick to a single strategy for buying and/or selling.  Strategy of the Biggs Incumbent firms that have been in the space since the downturn in 2008, many of them public REITs and privately held real estate investment companies, are a good place to start. Their strategies generally have to do with building onto existing footprints, growing market share in the areas they currently operate, pruning their holdings to create higher margins through improving operational efficiencies, and in some cases breaking into new markets while leveraging existing infrastructure. Firms who do not have the scale that these bigger companies possess may think that their tasks are somehow easier than firms that are just starting out, but I find generally it is quite the opposite. After all, once you set the level at which revenue is generated from owned assets, there is only one direction these firms can move to keep investors happy and coming back and keep companies thriving. If progress is not made through continual revenue growth, the market tends to notice. Lots of attention means a higher level of scrutiny from all sides. Forward progress is the only surefire way to ensure long term survival. When my company is engaged by larger firms with existing portfolios, it is generally geared toward the disposition of assets no longer viewed as essential to their long-term strategy. That means pruning existing holdings to redeploy capital into areas that have a better opportunity for future growth. The strategy is to sell those assets and move capital into higher growth areas, including transitional areas, where inventory is of lower cost and higher yielding or where the acquisition of new assets is easier to come by due to higher availability or lower competition. Very often assets are sold to other firms with a more regional focus thereby allowing competing firms to grow to scale. Many firms opt to add new build strategies in areas where one-off or portfolio acquisitions are harder to come by. This strategy, Build-For-Rent, is a longer and more involved way to eventually own and operate assets at the end of the process, but the benefits of venturing into these types of deals provide a huge long term competitive advantage. While cash flow is further out than buying existing assets, often the price that firms pay, on a per asset basis, is lower and at the end of the process, they own a new home that will appreciate faster in a rising market than older homes. An added benefit of moving into the new build space is the experience and know-how achieved buy completing such transactions. Once you have the infrastructure to source land or lots and the resources to erect new communities, the barrier to entering new areas of existing markets or new markets all together with a Build-For-Rent strategy are much lower than competitors without such experience. Once these firms learn how to ride that bike, that skill set cannot be unlearned, and the benefits of this acquired ability will pay dividends for years to come. Strategy of New Firms For newly minted firms, raising capital, whether easy due to reputation or contacts or hard due to lack of experience, is seen by many who have raised it as the easier part of the equation. Once capital is committed, then comes the challenging part of choosing markets, setting up acquisition and sourcing channels, and managing assets. Many firms coming from alternate asset types such as multifamily are making the switch, looking to use their resources to address the challenges of entering the Single-Family Rental space.  At Strata SFR, we love these new firms. They provide an opportunity to source brand new large and medium sized portfolios from some of our smaller regional investment clients looking to exit in a seemingly overheated market. The way these relationships often play out is, the firmidentifies a market or markets they are bullish on; we identify the largest owners of SFR in those markets; and approach them with an exit opportunity. For many owners, the presence of these new buyers is a welcome site as they give smaller operators a path to sell their portfolios at an attractive price, in one transaction, to one buyer. The ability to bring to the table a buyer with deep pockets, a relatively low Cap Rate threshold, and the ability to take down large numbers of rented houses is enough to get an opportunityon the table for our new fund clients. Once an initial portfolio trade happens, setting upon the task of helping these new funds build on early success is the next stage. Often this entails helping them create on-market acquisition strategies or connecting these firms with land developers and builders to build single-site communities. Whatever the method, the goal is clear: fast growth, rapid capital deployment into assets that will deliver a

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Why House Prices Beat the Pandemic Odds

…And Why So Many Housing Economists Got It Wrong by Brian Fluhr One year ago, at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, housing economists were making dire predictions for the market. The demise of housing did not play out the way many anticipated for several reasons but foremost because strong economic housing fundamentals were already in place pre-pandemic. These fundamentals included the durable credit of borrowers, balanced debt-to-income ratios, and reasonable loan-to-value ratios. Homeowners today can withstand the crosswinds of a temporary loss of income because many homeowners have a much healthier balance sheet than homeowners had during the Great Recession—by some estimates, $7 trillion in home equity across the country. The equity well reportedly increased by 16.2% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2020. In that estimation, the equity gain was more than $1.5 trillion. Federal policies enacted since the pandemic began helped provide additional stability. For instance, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law in March 2020, injected relief. This included expanded unemployment benefits, foreclosure bans, and student loan forbearance. COVID-19 hardship forbearance was extended to those hit by the pandemic, which had a federally backed mortgage. So why did so many economists predict a home price collapse as a result of the pandemic? Anxiety ensuing from the wave of job losses that followed the shutdown is in part to blame. The Jobs Impact Ordinarily, widespread job loss is associated with housing insecurity. By the fourth quarter last year, figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed that despite some improvement in the economy, “heightened unemployment and economic uncertainty could continue to affect the housing market through 2020 and beyond.” The bank referenced the 2007-09 financial crisis when foreclosures and tighter lending practices locked many out of homeownership for several years. “There are signs of these long-term effects again,” they added. However, the types of jobs lost were highly concentrated among lower-to middle-income workers, heavily impacting individuals in the decimated service industry who are more likely to live in rental units. An April 2020 report from the National Bureau for Economic Research elucidates this point. It found that 37% of jobs in the U.S. can be performed entirely at home, establishing that these occupations tend to be higher paying than those that cannot be performed in a home setting. Additionally, these jobs “account for 46% of all U.S. wages.” Veros Got It Right High-profile observers of the housing economy predicted that the market would depreciate annually due to the pandemic, with forecasts of prices dropping 6.6% by the early part of 2021 in one instance and between 0.5 and 2.5% from October 2020 to July 2021 in another.  VeroFORECAST, however, predicted that the global pandemic would only have a brief impact on housing prices. After one uncertain quarter, Veros stood tall by predicting that programs and policies implemented in the wake of the Great Recession would lead the market to return to pre-pandemic levels very quickly. At the close of the fourth quarter of 2019, predictions were buoyant over what was to come in 2020. In its Q4 2019 VeroFORECAST, the company predicted an average increase of nearly 4% by the fourth quarter of 2020. This projected increase was based on data from 332 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). At the time of its release, in early January 2020, Eric Fox, Veros’s vice president of statistical and economic modeling, cited sound economic fundamentals, low interest rates, and strong levels of employment as indicators of moderate home-price appreciation “with very few geographic pockets of weakness.” When data from the first quarter emerged in April 2020, Veros Real Estate Solutions projected that home price increases would pause for only one quarter. Home prices rebounded throughout the subsequent quarters of the year. In Q1 2020, VeroFORECAST data indicated an average projected appreciation rate increase of on average 1.9% through the first quarter of 2021. During 2020, there were two notable, competing scenarios at play. On the one hand: historically, low-interest rates stimulate demand and increased prices. On the other: rapidly rising unemployment and quickly falling GDP, both of which were turbulent but did not faze the housing market for the whole year, as others had predicted. Veros correctly indicated that there would be only a mild home price depreciation at the start of the pandemic, with a return to normal appreciation rates later in the year and into 2021. As such, in March 2020, Veros said that in the first quarter of 2020, prices would depreciate by 1.1%, then the real estate economy would recover, and by the first quarter of 2021, prices would return to pre-pandemic appreciation levels of about 1% per quarter. This forecast was in line with previous projections indicating positive average home price appreciation, despite pandemic-related economic uncertainty and unemployment, particularly in the leisure, hospitality, and tourism industries. The themes that Veros would point to early on started to take shape in subsequent quarterly reports. “This quarter’s forecast indicates significant home price appreciation from what we just experienced in the first quarter of 2020,” Fox said in early July. “Despite the devastating economic, social and health impact resulting from COVID-19, the overall average annual appreciation rate increased to 3.5% vs. 1.9% from the annual forecasted rate last quarter.” The return to house price increases presents a paradox: Despite the naysayer predictions, appreciation strengthened beyond the levels witnessed before COVID-19 curbed economic activity. One catalyst was what has been dubbed “COVID migration.” That is where those jobs that can be effectively performed at home take center stage. As soon as large tracts of the population realized that they could move their entire lives even significant distances from where they previously commuted to work, an exodus from key market areas started to occur. To be sure, the pandemic migration phenomenon is real. Places such as Boise, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington, continued to see a pattern of rising prices throughout 2020 and into 2021, while many urban centers across California saw

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Hartford, Connecticut

“New England’s Rising Star” City Could See Falling Home Prices Before 2022 by Carole VanSickle Ellis Hartford, Connecticut, is home to a lot of long-established locations, including the country’s oldest public art museum, the oldest publicly funded park, and the oldest continuously published newspaper. The city has also served as home to many historic figures, including Mark Twain, John M. Browning (inventor of the automatic pistol), and Alice Young, the first woman to be hanged for witchcraft in America. In 2021, the city is poised to add yet another “first” to its storied history; it may well be the first city in America to experience a post-COVID housing market correction. “The CoreLogic Market Risk Indicator (MRI)…predicts that metros such as Hartford, Connecticut…are at the greatest risk of a decline in home prices over the next 12 months,” reported 24/7 Wall St. in June. Readers should note the “greatest risk” is no guarantee of a crash or even a true correction; CoreLogic researchers assigned a probability of correction of less than 25 percent to Hartford and other similar markets. However, in a national market with a 2.4-month supply of housing inventory and double-digit year-over-year gains in value, any probability of a change in the temperature of a market is worth noting. “[Nationally] properties stayed on the market for 17 days in April, on average, and 88 percent of homes sold during that month were on the market for less than a month,” said Marco Santarelli, founder and CEO of Norada Real Estate Investments. “Most homes continue to sell faster, and the total number of homes available continues to be constrained.” Santarelli observed a “hot sellers’ real estate market in most areas of the country,” and added that Midwest and northeast housing markets “are the hottest and, together, make up 14 of the 20 hottest housing markets in the country according to Realtor.com.” By comparison, Redfin reported in May that Hartford homes remained on the market for an average of 61 days (just six days fewer than the same time in 2020). According to Redfin data, the median selling price in Hartford is currently about $215,000, down very slightly from April. Realtor.com researchers derived similar results, reporting that the 16 neighborhoods included in the metro area had skyrocketed in value by 30.9 percent year-over-year in May. Both sources reported limited inventory but noted that home sales in the area were climbing. Redfin reported 52 homes sold in May 2021 (vs. 46 in 2020), and Realtor.com reported 243 homes currently for sale in the area with 31 listed the last week in May alone. Edging Toward Equilibrium In light of this data, the emergence of Hartford on a list of markets most likely to experience a post-pandemic correction should be extremely interesting to real estate investors. Although Hartford, like the rest of the country, has experienced constrained inventory levels in 2021, local real estate professionals say there is a possibility that the market could begin edging back toward “equilibrium” by the end of the summer. “It is difficult to tell just how much demand exceeds supply,” admitted local agents Amy and Kyle Bergquist, who have been active in the area for more than a decade. They emphasized that investors hoping to make accurate predictions about the Hartford market should watch two indicators in particular: buyer frustration and listing pace. “We are always looking for clues about two key questions: How many buyers are getting frustrated with the market and opting out, and how will the pace of listing change?” the two explained. They noted that buyers are currently not necessarily “opting out” of the market but, instead, “settling in for a longer search.” This could help restore that equilibrium that might ultimately result in more opportunities for acquisition on the part of investors if there is no longer the same sense of urgency creating bidding wars and an auction mentality every time a property is listed. Given that more than half of the homes in Hartford sold for more than their asking price during Q1 2021, any equilibrium could be a positive sign for investors interested in fix-and-flip deals or long-term rentals. Hartford has also emerged from the pandemic as a burgeoning destination for remote workers and northeastern tourists. The city offers a vast array of attractions, including the former homes of literary giants like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wadsworth Atheneum (the oldest free, public museum in the U.S. and home to more than 50,000 works of art and “curiosity”), and parks like the Elizabeth Park Rose Garden and Bushnell Park. However, owning vacation rentals and short-term rentals in the area can be complicated, so investors should do their due diligence and work with a local expert before getting involved in this asset class (see sidebar). Hartford Investors Face Ongoing COVID Questions Like everywhere else in the United States, Hartford has been dramatically affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic and resultant health policy decisions made on state and local levels. In Hartford’s case, however, local policy will affect investing strategy in extremely tangible ways even after the CDC eviction bans and other national-level foreclosure moratoriums have ended. Hartford investors must factor two significant issues into their decisions about where to invest and what strategy to use: employment initiatives and local eviction policies. Unemployment improvement in Hartford and in Connecticut as a whole has been sluggish, with unemployment rates remaining stubbornly above the national average. According to the Connecticut Department of Labor, Hartford’s unemployment rate in April was still hovering just under 14 percent (not seasonally adjusted). Connecticut’s unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent in January 2021 to 7.6 percent in April 2021, but still felt bleak compared to the national rate of 6.1 percent. However, Department of Labor research director Patrick Flaherty emphasized there are many factors in play that could help the city and state in the coming months. “Recoveries are uneven,” he said. “Evidence of increased job postings and openings suggest Connecticut is poised for larger [employment] gains

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More than Appraisers: Advocates and Partners for Life

Appraisal Nation’s Loyalty to Clients & the Industry Stands Out by Carole VanSickle Ellis Michael Tedesco and his partners founded Appraisal Nation in 2007, just in time for one of the worst housing corrections in history. It might sound like a terrible beginning, but Tedesco proudly notes it was the crisis that formed the cornerstone of Appraisal Nation. “We lived through one of the worst housing recessions in history, and we built the number-one private lending appraisal management company (AMC) through that,” the CEO of Appraisal Nation recalled. “It was our process to focus on the needs of small-to-mid-sized lenders, even the individual brokers, which at that time was relatively unheard of for AMCs. Unfortunately, when the market did crash, it proved extremely difficult [for anyone] to get business.” Tedesco and his partners were determined, however. Relentlessly, they went door-to-door in Raleigh, North Carolina, then expanded outward across the nation. “We made it through on persistence and a little stubbornness, introducing ourselves, and building our brand at a time when most AMCs focused only on the big banks,” Tedesco recalled. Today, Appraisal Nation works with more than 3,000 lenders around the country, boasts a nationwide panel of more than 20,000 appraisers, and completes more than 250,000 appraisals per year with some of the fastest turnaround times in the country. Appraisal Nation has also been included on the Inc. 5,000 for the past five consecutive years. Inc. editor-in-chief James Ledbetter observed of the companies included on this list, “There is no single course you can follow or investment you can take that will guarantee this kind of spectacular growth, but what they have in common is persistence and seizing opportunities.” John Tedesco, senior vice president of business development at the company, cites Appraisal Nation’s dedication to treating each client like an “anchor client” regardless of size or location as the source of said spectacular growth. “Most appraisal companies have one or two big anchor clients, but Appraisal Nation has deliberately cultivated a diverse portfolio of small- and mid-size lenders,” he explained. “This is an approach most AMCs cannot replicate because they are not built to service clients doing just a few appraisals a month. We give our clients the room to start small if that is what they need and also give them room to grow.” Many of the company’s clients have been with Appraisal Nation since the very beginning, often starting out with monthly activity as low as five or ten appraisals a month. Now, these companies have a monthly volume in the thousands. “Our clients have a loyalty to us because we helped them from the beginning. We always wanted to treat every client as if they were a Chase or a Wells Fargo regardless of size,” he said. Strength in Numbers Because Appraisal Nation has such a large volume of clients and treats each client with the same attention to detail as big banks and lenders, it is imperative that the company have a streamlined process in place for keeping the thousands of orders for appraisals in order. That is where Al Ballard, executive vice president of operations, and his team come into the picture. Ballard likes to describe his team, which consists of three primary departments, as running a relay race for each client order. A client order begins with the placement team, whose job it is to communicate with clients and appraisers to ensure that each order is assigned to an appraiser who understands what the client needs and how the assignment will work. That is the first leg of the race. “We like to get off the starting blocks clean, fast, and flawlessly,” Ballard said, noting that the placement team consists of individuals who have usually been with the company for years and are deeply familiar with client needs and different appraisers’ abilities themselves. “We pride ourselves in developing top talent and promoting from within. All of my team leads and managers began in entry-level positions within the company and earned their promotions through hard work, education, experience, and an innate willingness to go above and beyond for our clients,” Ballard said. “We have developed some who are now in executive positions. Operationally, I’m very proud of the team we have built.” Once the job and the appraiser have been connected, the client service team takes the baton for the second leg of the race. This team monitors the progress of the order, a crucial role that has always been important and has become even more vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. The client service team is in charge of keeping things running smoothly, tracking inspection dates and other appointments, keeping the client up-to-date, and making sure the order is completed and delivered by the due date. The result of this intense tracking speaks for itself: Appraisal times have lengthened dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Appraisal Nation has kept their turn-times in the single digits in almost every state. “The ‘secret’ is just streamlining the process,” explained David Roberts, senior vice president of strategic partnerships. “We are always focused on making our process more efficient for every client.” The final leg of Ballard’s relay, the quality control team, is crucial to that ongoing refinement of the appraisal process. “They deliver the report to the client and, in the process, make sure that report meets or exceeds client expectations in quality,” Ballard said. “They are the gatekeepers, and we all take a lot of pride in these professionals.” Interestingly, Ballard’s quality control team is made up of both appraisal experts and experts in other areas of real estate. This is deliberate, intended to keep client needs front and center rather than permitting an internal, industry focus to dominate the quality evaluation. Appraisal Nation believes a team of real estate professionals with a diverse range of expertise can best serve a client in terms of making sure the client’s needs are met and, when necessary, that expectations are managed appropriately. “With the ongoing pandemic and the

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