The BPO business is an exciting niche of the foreclosure industry today. Whether you’re a seasoned real estate agent or new to the business, real estate agents typically spend several hours each week creating Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) for potential clients in hopes of getting a listing or convincing a buyer to make a move. an offer. In the end, every agent hopes that their CMA results in a good paycheck; but this is not always the case. However, when you complete a BPO, you are sure that the report you spend an hour or two to complete will generate some additional income for that month.

So what stands between you and that paycheck when you complete a BPO? Aside from the obvious need to photograph the property and fill out the report, there is a department within every BPO company that handles quality control. If you can’t get past this department, then it will not only delay how quickly you get paid, but it will determine if you will receive any additional BPO from that company. Also, if your orders are delivered on time and without errors, your chances of selling that property when it forecloses increases because the banks know you are a reliable real estate agent.

After completing more than 2,000 BPOs in the last 18 months, I would like to share with you 10 Secrets to Filling Out Your BPO Reports Like a Pro:

1. Immediately upon acceptance of a BPO order, read the confirmation email and note the DATE and TIME the order is due. Please note the time zone of the expiration time, as it may be different than your current time zone. Not paying attention to this can mean the difference between a report that is delivered on time and one that is delivered late.

2. Please note whether the order is an exterior or interior BPO. If it is an interior, look for the information of the point of contact (POC) to access the property as soon as possible. Also note what photos are necessary. There is nothing worse than forgetting to take the right photos. It is better to take too many photos than not to take enough.

3. Most BPO companies have a website that you log into to fill out the report. Be sure to log into that company’s website and read the full details of that report which will include the guidelines for that report. This will save you a lot of trouble in your property analysis and when searching for comparables.

4. Get the tax record and/or call the county assessor’s office to get all the information you can about the property. Note the property’s parcel number, land and market appraised values, whether the property is residential or commercial, current property taxes for the entire year, whether any taxes are delinquent, and what year the property was made the last appraisal. Property taxes will be provided by the Treasury Department.

5. If you don’t have access to the inside information on a property, call the BPO company and ask if they have a previous appraisal on file. Also, if you’re having trouble finding comparables, call the BPO company’s quality control department and ask for guidance. They can usually help you properly expand your search criteria to find additional comparables and will make notes in the system that will prevent your order from being rejected. When all else fails, find the best available comparables and provide full details in the report on which criteria you expanded and why.

6. During the completion of some reports, you will be asked to make adjustments to the comparables. This process can be tedious and slow if you don’t know how to do it. My best suggestion is to look at your market and determine how different attributes such as square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, age, and lot size vary in terms of added benefit to a property. From here you can create a system where you can adjust the differences between the property in question and the comparables you have chosen. Remember, you only make the adjustment to the comparable with respect to the property in question only, not between each comparable. This process acts to put all comparables on a level playing field when evaluating them against the subject property so that a broader picture of the subject’s fair market value can be assessed.

7. When selecting comparables, please ensure that the interior square footage of the comparables is in parentheses with those of the subject property. For example, if the subject is 1,000 square feet above ground, the comparables might be 800 square feet, 950 square feet, and 1,100 square feet. These comparables would bracket the topic because 1000 square feet is between 800 square feet and 1100 square feet. Additionally, all square footage is measured in terms of Gross Deliverable Area (GLA) and includes only square footage above grade (ground level). Basements are not part of a property’s GLA because they are below grade.

8. The final value of the subject property must be in parentheses between the lowest and highest comparable SOLD. For example, the final value is $100,000 and the sold comparables have values ​​of $91,000, $98,000, and $103,000. As a result, $100,000 is correctly placed between $91,000 and $103,000. Your comparable assets do not have to bracket the ending value. In most markets, active comparables are priced above final sale value, unless the market is falling significantly each month.

9. Your final value must also be within the range of the subject’s neighborhood sold values ​​for the past 12 months. This is typically what is requested when a report searches for ‘neighbor values’. For example, the final value is $100,000 and your lowest selling house in your subject’s neighborhood is $55,000 and the highest is $165,000. The final value of $100,000 would correctly be bracketed within the range of values ​​for the neighborhood in question.

10. Be sure to check the entire report for spelling and grammatical errors before submitting. You will also see that many BPO companies have a quality control checker or validation tool that looks for errors in the report. This only checks that your numbers are within acceptable guidelines and will not check for spelling or grammatical errors. If you come across quality control errors, then it is vital that you review them thoroughly and write explanations as to why you had to exceed the guidelines provided by the BPO company in each and every aspect that is mentioned. The more information you provide, the less likely the quality control department will flag and return the report.

There are many variables that need to be considered during the BPO completion process. Hopefully, these secrets I’ve shared with you will help you complete your BPOs faster and save you from wasting more time answering questions from your BPO firm’s QA departments.