CHARTERED SURVEYOR APPROVED Having recently signed a deal with proptech firm Valos, Martin Hughes, Regional Director, Eddisons, outlines the vital role technology & digital resources now play in supporting the surveying firm’s national valuation team.
In partnering with Valos, we are, of course, looking to further drive efficiencies and increase the speed and accuracy with which valuation reports are delivered to clients.
The platform automates the routine elements of carrying out valuations to improve accuracy, cut production time and produce enhanced data. What’s more, the Valos platform has been developed by qualified and accredited valuers who understand the nuances of professional valuation practice.
But the bespoke Valos templates for Eddisons are just the latest tools in our valuations armoury. They are part of a suite of other online tools and digital resources that have been shaping and honing the process and practice of valuations for the past two decades now as the surveying profession, as a whole, continues to moves away from legacy ways of working.
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There are fewer and fewer provincial surveying firms dominating local markets with so many mergers and acquisitions bringing smaller, regional firms in to the fold of larger multi-disciplinary property consultancies. Indeed, Eddisons own acquisitions’ march has seen number of once regional firms across the country now operating under the national umbrella – most recently in the East Midlands and Eastern regions the Northampton-based firm, Budworth Hardcastle and Lincoln’s and Licoln’s Banks Long & Co.
But acquisition by larger firms in the sector will only have stepped up the use of technology in valuations by professionals in the once smaller firms because the past 15 years, in particular, have seen the rise and use of many commercial and public sector sources of data feeding in to professional property disciplines.
The move to digital government at central, departmental and local authority levels, had already transformed the gathering of publicly available data from sources such as the Land Registry, the Environment Agency, Department of Transport and planning departments – among other public sector organisations.
Commercially, there is a proliferation of core databases and portals tracking and detailing property transactions in the commercial and residential sectors available on a subscription basis. Specialist geo-spatial and mapping software also provides vital data input for valuations.
While technology, online tools and resources speed up the gathering of data and, in many cases, reduce the actual legwork in, for example, not having to book an appointment to examine a physical plan at a local authority department, information alone does not a valuation make.
Neither does the mere possession of all that information give a surveying firm the edge when it comes to a valuation report. Data can give you the headlines, but it’s far from the full story. The real worth of a valuation to a client is the professional interpretation of that data based on sector specific knowledge and how that’s in play in the local market.
The use of technology in obtaining and crunching the data frees up the professional valuer’s time to interpret and interrogate the information and take a critical approach.
For instance, the ‘value’ to a client might be in the land in the long term, not the property itself as it stands at that particular point in time. It’s important to know what factors or policies are in play, or likely to be in play, that might affect the short, medium or long term value of the property or the land on which it stands.
The use of technology in valuations exists to enhance and empower the surveying professional deploying it – it’s not a replacement.
While a hangover from the pre-digital age, the RICS ‘Red Book’ remains the industry benchmark and also professional shorthand for the integrity of any valuation. But we are, thankfully, a long way from the days of an actual ‘Red Book’ as a reference source and from valuation being a professional practice that can be wholly undertaken by AI.
This article is reproduced by kind permission of ((https://www.businessweekly.co.uk/)) Business Weekly in which a version recently appeared as part of the publication’s monthly ‘Scaling up in association with Eddisons’ feature.
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