Mosaic Property Valuations relaunches as an independent practice, powered by Valcre

Mosaic easily implements Valcre and produces faster reports, almost immediately

“Everybody in this business knows there’s only two levers you can pull to get more jobs in the door. You can either lower your fees or shorten your turn time. Valcre lets us shorten those turn times without lowering our fees, which is huge.”

Daniel Schwertz

Mosaic discovered Valcre through trusted colleagues in the industry and quickly realized that the modern appraisal software was the foundation they needed to venture out on their own once again.

“We were introduced to Valcre and we realized there was a better product out there that was faster and more accurate,” says Sheila Schwertz. “I think it was the impetus that made us realize that, hey, we can do this. We can go back on our own and service our clients in the way we feel is best, and meet their needs in a better, more efficient way.”

Valcre worked hand-in-hand with the Mosaic team to get them up and running as quickly as possible. As a result, the Mosaic team experienced the benefit of faster report turnarounds – almost immediately.

They felt the impact most significantly in the following ways:

Faster, more accurate appraisals turned around in two days (in some cases), as compared to a week

“It went from taking a week to do a Dollar General [appraisal], and now with Valcre, I can do one (Dollar General) in two days. With Valcre’s mobile app, I can go out on inspection, enter the data in the app, and basically have the report written by the time I get back. The speed is phenomenal.”

Arthur Schwertz, MAI, ASA

With Valcre, the Mosaic team is able to turn high quality appraisals faster, in the knowledge that the software will work as it should. And the days of crashes or malfunctions when merging data from Excel into Word reports (and the associated downtime) are over. “By far, the biggest impact Valcre has had is to take away a lot of the headaches and stress,” says Arthur. “I don’t have to worry about the software – it works.”

Mosaic’s appraisers appreciate Valcre’s advanced capabilities, including its Excel functionality, which enables them to transfer maps and their associated sales, rent, and expense comps in one click. Another standout aspect is the mobile app, which allows appraisers to enter data and photos, search the database, and select the best comparables while out in the field – significantly speeding up the appraisal process.

Thanks to Valcre’s extensive network of public-data integrations, the Mosaic team can automatically, accurately pull in assessor data without the need to re-enter it – cutting down on miscellaneous typing, corrections, and time spent.

Personalized onboarding and training helped Mosaic get up to speed quickly

Valcre worked closely with Mosaic’s previous software provider to transfer the company’s entire database to the new platform, including cleaning it up and formatting it properly. Valcre also automatically updated Mosaic’s templates with their custom branding fonts and colors. “We never had to do any of that, they handled everything,” said Daniel. “On day one when we flipped the switch, everything was there and ready to go.”

“It took all of about two to three weeks for Valcre to get 13 years’ worth of data into their system,” said Arthur. “We’re talking thousands of sales, lease comps, and properties.”

Additionally, Valcre provided in-depth training to ensure the Mosaic team was able to learn how to use the system quickly, including hosting four live training sessions with a dedicated Valcre representative and providing access to a library of evergreen, educational videos.

“The training we had with Valcre was really incredible. A lot of software platforms might give you one training session or some online videos and say, ‘watch these videos and figure it out’,” says Daniel. “But Valcre really held our hand throughout the whole process. Anytime you interact with someone there’s this sense that this person really knows what it’s like to use the software.”

On-call support means appraisers can move faster and focus on appraising

Thanks to Valcre’s convenient customer support team, Mosaic’s team is able to overcome problems and get questions answered faster, with the burden no longer on the more advanced users in the office. ‘Valcre’s support team is phenomenal,” says Arthur. “They have enabled our team not only to reduce the time they’re asking questions about how to do things, but the support team responds immediately most days.”

One standout example includes an appraiser who was working on Easter Sunday prior to taking his family on vacation. He emailed support about a problem in his spreadsheet at 3AM and had a response, and his error, corrected in under an hour.

In another case, a Valcre appraiser was working on a typical New Orleans mixed-use property and needed a customized template. She called Valcre’s support team who designed a template for her needs in 8-10 hours. “That’s unheard of and is partly because a lot of the people who work at Valcre are appraisers or have been appraisers and they know what appraisers need, which is just excellent in our opinion,” says Arthur.