Doorify Real Estate Podcast

Leveraging CMAsnap for Faster, Accurate Property Listings with Tom Cunningham

• Doorify MLS • Episode 75

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The real estate game is all about having the right tools at your disposal, and CMAsnap is one you definitely want in your corner. 

I'm joined by Tom Cunningham, a seasoned real estate professional and former appraiser. He’s the driving force behind CMAsnap, a cutting-edge tool that promises to save you time and improve the accuracy of your property listings. 

We explore how Tom transitioned from structured finance to creating an app that significantly speeds up the process of generating broker price opinions. You'll also get a firsthand look at how CMAsnap operates, complete with a demonstration that showcases its impressive capabilities. 

If you’ve ever struggled with lengthy appraisals or want to streamline your listing process, this episode is for you.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • The importance of starting a valuation without preconceived notions
  • How CMAsnap automates and refines the comparative market analysis process
  • Practical examples and stories of using CMAsnap in real-world scenarios

Links from this episode:

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Tom Cunningham [00:00:00]:
I always go back to the data. So when you're a former appraiser, you know that you're not supposed to walk into any kind of valuation with any preconceived notion of value you're supposed to deal with. These are the comps. It is what it is.
Tom Cunningham [00:00:11]:
There may be some stuff that we can tweak on either side, but you really need to go in without a preconceived notion, and that's the hardest thing for a realtor to do.

Matt Fowler [00:00:26]:
Hey, everybody, it's Matt Fowler again, executive director of Doorify MLS in Cali, North Carolina, and we're here with another one of our podcasts to introduce you to some cool new tech that is coming to the My Doorify dashboard. We have a special guest with us today, Tom Cunningham. Hey, Tom.

Tom Cunningham [00:00:44]:
Hey, good morning.

Matt Fowler [00:00:46]:
Thanks for joining us.

Tom Cunningham [00:00:47]:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Matt Fowler [00:00:49]:
Yeah, we're really glad you're here and we're really excited that you're going to be talking about. No. One of your favorite topics is CMASnap Project.

Tom Cunningham [00:00:58]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:00:58]:
We have a new philosophy at Triangle that. You made me laugh. Really, Tom. Our mutual friend Tim Dane introduced us. Tim's the CEO up at Northstar, I think years from Austin. You've got the product up and running in a few MLS, but a lot of MLS that you approach say, we already got one, right? Like the French guy, the Monty Python movie. That's such a silly answer, you know, so we don't believe in that. We do have five, maybe, I don't know how many CNAs there are.

Matt Fowler [00:01:28]:
RPR. Each one of the MLS platforms, you know, have their own. There's one in Home Spotter that our subscribers have access to, but we want. We believe in choice and variability in both pricing and functionality. I'm a recovering real estate appraiser, as I share with people, and I shouldn't be the chooser of what you want to use in your practice.

Tom Cunningham [00:01:47]:
Yeah.

Matt Fowler [00:01:48]:
So what we did is Tim introduced us to Tom here, and Tom showed us this really cool product. And I am a recovering appraiser I know a little bit about, and it's. It's pretty neat. We had our appraisal council review it. They had some comments about Realtors making adjustments and stuff that we'll just leave for another podcast, but they liked it. You know, I can see some of them thinking kind of the same way that you're making those adjustments. We had a deep dive conversation about it, but a deep enough conversation that I'm confident that this is certainly a viable, useful Tool. That's the bar.

Matt Fowler [00:02:19]:
That's all we have to do to get past me. Now, what I want you to do is to tell our 15,000 subscribers, thousands of them do watch this podcast. Thanks, everybody. Why CMASnap, right? You got all these. What do you guys do? Where did you come from? What's special about CMA?

Tom Cunningham [00:02:38]:
So, well, yeah, thanks again for having me. I could give you the long version, but the short version is I was trying to build another app. I used to do broker price opinions, and I was a broker price opinion resource for. For half a dozen appraisal management companies. And I approached things from an analytical standpoint. When you do a broker price opinion, it's like an express appraisal. And so there's a whole lot of deep dive analytics that you take into consideration, and you have to make adjustments and you have to judge the overall market and you need to do a rental analysis and all that. I used to do those things when the market was really bad here in Austin, just trying to make an extra few bucks.

Tom Cunningham [00:03:13]:
But in a previous life, I was a structured finance guy and I used to crunch data, and I felt like, you know, the whole BPO process, it just took too long. It was a couple hour process, you know, and I was like, well, you know, we should be able to automate most of this. And so I originally was building an API for appraisal management companies, you know, so they could go to the broker price pinion guys and say, hey, you know, you can make your 60 bucks in two hours or you can make it 25 minutes. So that was my first hurdle. And as I got closer, I was up in Seattle visiting a friend of mine, and he worked for Microsoft. And I was telling him, yeah, yeah, man, I got two and a half hours down to 25 minutes. And he's like, 25 minutes? I want 20 seconds, man. What? 25 minutes? You're a dinosaur, dude.

Tom Cunningham [00:03:57]:
So that took me another year, right? So I started working on that. And then as the market started turning around, I had built this thing with a developer friend of mine, and we had it on a development server. And so as Mark started turning around, I was out with my chiropractor and his pregnant, very pregnant wife in the middle of the summer in Austin. And we looked at 15 houses in one day because both of us were too scared to tell her to narrow it down to four or five. Right? Yeah. So at the end of it, you know, we'd spent 10 hours in the car together. And at the end of it, you know, they said, well, you know, we really like number seven. What do you think we should offer? And I started to say, let me go back to the office and pull the cops and I'll call you in an hour or so and we'll.

Tom Cunningham [00:04:35]:
We'll come up with something. But I really didn't want to drive all the way back to my house, like 45 minutes across town from my office, and just on a whim, I pulled out my phone and I logged into my development server and I pulled up the BPO app that Barry and I had been building, and I pulled some comps and we went into Seattle's Best Coffee and we wrote a contract, and they bought a house, and I made $15,000 in commission. That day it switched to a CMA app.

Tom Cunningham [00:05:01]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:05:01]:
That's a great story, Tom. It reminds me of a question I wanted to ask you. If you're done with that, a thought as we. I want you to, like, share your screen and maybe show people a little bit of CMA Snap. But I thought just for my customers sake, I'm always poking fun at them because I was an appraiser. So if you're going to. You're going to encourage people to use CMASnap, and these were realtors we're talking to. You know, what, can you put in a number that you want to make and commission and have the CMA program tell you what you need to price the property for?

Tom Cunningham [00:05:35]:
Yeah. You know. Yeah. Well, I mean, the number is gonna.

Matt Fowler [00:05:40]:
Like, bake out, you know.

Tom Cunningham [00:05:42]:
Hey, I get that. I get. I really do.

Matt Fowler [00:05:46]:
It's a tough world out there right now, Tom. So when somebody has this on their laptop, as you did in Seattle's Coffee, but in this case, they're going into maybe a seller's a showing a listing presentation. Let's approach it from that perspective real quick. And. And let's say that you've got, you know, 1, 2, 3 Jones street, your kitchen table. Hey, Tom, what do we. What do you think we should price our house at?

Tom Cunningham [00:06:09]:
Yeah. So I always go back to the data.

Tom Cunningham [00:06:12]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:06:12]:
I mean, you're supposed to. When you're. You've got. You. You're a former appraiser, you know that you're not supposed to walk into any kind of valuation with any preconceived notion of value.

Matt Fowler [00:06:21]:
Sure.

Tom Cunningham [00:06:21]:
You're supposed to deal with. What's this is. These are the comps. Right. It is what it is.

Tom Cunningham [00:06:27]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:06:27]:
There may be some stuff that we can tweak on either side, but you really need to go in with a. Without a preconceived notion. And that's the hardest thing for a realtor to do. Right. Because early on, you know, when I, and I'll, I mean, I'll be perfectly candid with you about the limitations of the app. Early on, I went to a listening presentation and the guy walks out. I mean, I pulled up in the driveway and the guy is walking out his front door and the first words out of his mouth were not hello, it was I want 600. And I went, well, let's, let's go see.

Tom Cunningham [00:07:00]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:07:01]:
Well, expectations. I think we all know that I.

Tom Cunningham [00:07:04]:
Couldn'T come up with 600 to save a life for me. I was like, I love this thing at 585. And I turned down the listing and he gave it to somebody else and that somebody else listed at 605 or something. And it sat there for three weeks and then they hit like 590. And I turned down a listing over $15,000 difference. And she didn't. And she made the money. And I was like, ok, you still have to be a realtor.

Tom Cunningham [00:07:30]:
You still have to know how to negotiate, and you still have to talk about, you know, variables.

Matt Fowler [00:07:35]:
So maybe open your laptop and let's see what you would show the seller.

Tom Cunningham [00:07:39]:
Yeah, all right, sure. Let me metaphorically open your laptop, Metaphorically speaking. All right, so I actually, let's see here. Can you guys see my screen?

Matt Fowler [00:07:50]:
Yep. Lots of houses.

Tom Cunningham [00:07:52]:
So this is the dashboard. This is what? You know, once you start doing reports, you're going to fill this up pretty quickly. I went to realtor.com this morning and I pulled up recent price reductions in the Triangle area. Address on the first one on there was 1613 Beacon Valley. 1613 Beacon Valley. So this is sort of just to give you an idea of how fast, you know, the app runs. You just pull up the address from a dropdown. It's going to come up with the.

Tom Cunningham [00:08:20]:
There's the listing. Okay. If it's never been listed in the MLS, you can start from a tax record. But we have this report right here ready to go. So there's a property form you get, make sure nobody's added a pool or anything crazy like that. Can you still see my app?

Matt Fowler [00:08:37]:
Yes, it's zoomed in.

Tom Cunningham [00:08:38]:
So we put in 1613 Beacon Valley. All right, so we're going to pull that from the dropdown. All right. And then we're going to click on the MLS listing. You can start from a tax record if it's never been listed. And this is the Property form that you get just to make sure that nobody's added, you know, square footage or a pool or something like that. So once we hit, once we hit submit, what's going to happen is the app's going to go out, it's going to be looking for three and three, three solds and three actives or pendings. We start out looking for 20% of the square footage or built within five years.

Tom Cunningham [00:09:11]:
And then we run a bunch of algorithms and then we zero in on the comps that the system likes the best and then we deliver it in. You know, this is the first place you start, right? So if I'm actually talking to somebody that I've never talked to before and they ask me, you know, what about the market and this and that, the first place I go is to the snapshot, right? So I could say, listen, we're looking out three miles. In the last five months, there have been 37 properties sold. There's seven pendings and there's 13 actives. You know, I'd love to see where these are the prices that they sold out. I'd love to see where your house fits into the market. You know, why don't we, why don't we go by and take a look tomorrow afternoon, right? But what we try to do is we try to give you instant feedback on the combination of comps that you select or the system selects, right? So the system, you know, we did pretty good in this one, right? And you can look at all these comps and you can tell that they're all, you know, pretty solid. They all look pretty much the same.

Tom Cunningham [00:10:03]:
So I'm, I'm pretty happy with these comps. But if I wasn't, I could go into the comps page and I could go, okay, well, let's see. So there, for whatever reason, there's another comp over here. I see actually something. This is, this is interesting. So the subject property right here is facing a green belt looking thing. I might want to make an adjustment on one of these comps that's not on the green belt. And the way that I would do that is I would go in here and I would go to this and I would add an adjustment.

Tom Cunningham [00:10:32]:
These are the adjustments that the system made automatically, right? And so I could go down here and I could go, well, you know, superior view waterfront golf course view adjustment, Bam. There you go. There's a view adjustment. So I'm going to add 12 grand for the view on that one. I'm going to follow up and do it on all these. And so now I'm going to end up having a fully adjusted CMA. And listen, you, you know, you're an appraiser. You know how it goes.

Tom Cunningham [00:10:56]:
What the last thing that you want to do when you are creating an appraisal package for an appraiser for your listing is send them, you know, just hand them a stack of MLS sheets, right? That's not what they want.

Matt Fowler [00:11:08]:
Yeah, I was always taught that you let the data tell you the range of value.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:14]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:11:15]:
And then you choose three to six examples from the market.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:21]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:11:22]:
Lower and a higher to bracket your recommended.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:27]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:11:27]:
So comp selection is about storytelling around to illustrate the bracket that you. And then in the middle of that bracket, maybe there's a point number, you.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:38]:
Know, so here, speaking of brackets, here's a bracket on square footage, right? So the subject property is 1400 square feet. So we got two smaller and one bigger. We follow along appraisal methodology based on the principal contribution.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:52]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:11:53]:
Which, you know, the principal contribution means that it says that every property is built of several components, and each of those components together comprise the overall value of the house. But the cost of those components doesn't necessarily equal the value. And so that's the way that we built our adjustment algorithm, and that's what we bank on. But listen, if you walk out into somebody's backyard, all right, and you see a swimming pool that looks like Splashtown USA and I'm giving you 20 grand for the pool, you can, you can change that.

Matt Fowler [00:12:21]:
So you've got, you've got individual adjustments that you can make. I saw that there were automated adjustments that were made based on series of automated.

Tom Cunningham [00:12:31]:
If there's something else that you need to adjust for, we have a whole, you know, a whole battery of things are pre programmed, right?

Matt Fowler [00:12:37]:
Yeah, that's really, that's really intricate, Tom, but it helps you fill that out. So it gives you clarity, but it also has the intelligence built into it. When you get done with that, I guess you're going to finish comp selection, looking at the time, and then you're going to produce a report in some way.

Tom Cunningham [00:12:53]:
Yes.

Matt Fowler [00:12:54]:
Print those and then share them.

Tom Cunningham [00:12:56]:
Well, this is the way that the report looks, you know, when you share it via link. Okay. It looks like this. And this is all interactive and it's a beautiful thing. And if you haven't seen somebody's house before, you can turn off the sales price where when you send it to them via text or email or whatever, you might want to hold your cards back.

Tom Cunningham [00:13:13]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:13:13]:
And so we Give you a lot of options to be able to do that. And let me just see if I can actually pull this off. But I'm going to try to show you what it looks like on a phone. Okay, so now do you see a phone screen?

Matt Fowler [00:13:26]:
See the choice? Yeah. Then the screen. Yeah, there you go. So that's a responsive view of that report.

Tom Cunningham [00:13:30]:
This is going to be in a second here. Hold on. So this is a responsive view of that report. All right, so this is what the client sees, right. So when you text it to them, they're going to open it up and they're going to be able to follow along. You know, look at all the comps. They'll be able to see all the pictures. Man, it's running a little bit slow right now, but all the pictures will populate and so they can really follow along with you and they could go through and you can talk to them about, you know, here's comp number one.

Tom Cunningham [00:13:58]:
And we, you know, we're making an adjustment for square footage. You know, comp number one's a little bit smaller by a few 100 square feet. So we're going to make an adjustment down here. Square footage adjustment down here.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:10]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:10]:
And you can follow along with the client. And when they. And when they see this, you know, it's easier for them to understand. I mean, it kind of looks like a mini appraisal. Actually kind of looks a little bit better. If you turn the screen sideways, you have a little bit more room.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:23]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:14:23]:
Well, that's, you know, subject on the left and three comps like the UR format. I think that's, you know, people used to.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:31]:
Yeah. And so if we make it super easy to change the comp. So I'm going to see if I can pull this off on the phone here. Let's say that I don't like Beacon Village.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:41]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:41]:
I don't like this one. I do like Montau Way. Right. So it's as easy as taking that one out and putting that one in instead. And now I have a different series of comps, right. And so when I share it, they're going to see all that. And if I turn off like, you know, the sales price, then this is what they're going to see. Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:14:59]:
And what our experience.

Matt Fowler [00:15:01]:
Or they get a new link.

Tom Cunningham [00:15:03]:
No, no, that's the same one they're looking at. It's dynamic. So whatever, whatever state you leave it in is what they're going to see.

Tom Cunningham [00:15:09]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:15:09]:
So if you leave the prices turned off, then the prices are going to be turned off. And that's, that's that, you know, and so, you know, the idea there is that, you know, we want to give you as much flexibility to share it in the way that you want to share it and, you know, and give.

Matt Fowler [00:15:25]:
You a beautiful value when you're ready.

Tom Cunningham [00:15:28]:
Yeah, and reveal. Exactly. Reveal the value when you're ready. So, you know, it's, it's proven that people that send out 25, 30 of these things a month when they're prospecting, if they block out the price, invariably they'll get a couple of calls that'll say, well, what's my adjusted sale price? And they'll say, well, I'm glad you called. Why don't we talk about that tomorrow? Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Matt Fowler [00:15:51]:
So that's a persistent lead out there. When somebody's got one of those links and you can update it, you know, tell them the new comp was in the neighborhood. That's a great opportunity to somebody.

Tom Cunningham [00:16:01]:
Yeah, they're super easy for you to be able to go in and change things and you can go and update these reports. It's no problem whatsoever. You know, we just made it as easy as we possibly could for the agents. You know, I mean, I was a, I was a real estate agent in the trenches. And I think that a lot of the software out there for realtors is built by developers that have never been in the trenches and they've never had to sit at somebody's coffee table and explain to them why their house isn't going to sell for $100,000 more than, you know, it should.

Matt Fowler [00:16:31]:
Yeah, I mean, I ran a software company for a long time. You know, the average first time home buyer now is in their 30s. So, you know, a developer who gets out of college and start working is 20 something. And those guys work for 10 years before they buy a house these days. And you're talking about the developers that I hire out of college who write the programs you're talking about. And that guy had bought a house. Right. He doesn't know what active means or closed or off market seller concessions or anything.

Tom Cunningham [00:16:59]:
Well, not only that, but he doesn't know what kind of a grind you have to go through to make a living in the real estate business.

Matt Fowler [00:17:06]:
Yeah, yeah.

Tom Cunningham [00:17:07]:
I mean, most people don't certainly, you know, it's not, it ain't as easy as it used to be. You know, we're just trying to give you the tools that you need to be able to show your value immediately, show that you have command of the Data and be able to convert the opportunities that fall in your lap. I don't know. I've been at it for 15 years, 16 years. Anyway, long time. I don't know how many times I've. I call it forest gumping. Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:17:30]:
I've Forrest Gump my way into a, to a listing appointment. You know, be talking to somebody in a grocery store. I actually have clients that have gotten listing customers in line at the grocery store. Have you heard about the crazy real estate market? No, not really. Well, what's your address? In between the checkout line and the parking lot, they've got a listing appointment for the next day, right?

Matt Fowler [00:17:48]:
Yeah.

Tom Cunningham [00:17:48]:
Able to text the client something to give them, get them started and get yourself converted into the next conversation. That's what we're trying to do.

Matt Fowler [00:17:55]:
What's more important than the value? Right. So you've got something that you can just set somebody up really easily with their address. One of those links on CMA Snap, I think that makes it a really viable and compelling option that people are going to see on the dashboard. So I want our subscribers to know about CMA Snap here at the, at the end of our time today is that it's going to be coming very soon. Tom and I are trying to get it out as fast as possible. I don't know if it's going to make it in December. December is super hard just because of, you know, everything else going on. We have some targets in early January.

Matt Fowler [00:18:28]:
But coming very, very soon, you're going to see a tri CMA Snap tile on your my doorfiremlots.com dashboard. There's going to be a free trial for a period where you can kick the tires. And then after that, the CMA Snap product carried a retail price that comes with a discount a little cheaper than you can buy it online directly from. Com. We're going to offer that for a period of time and then it's priced monthly, billed quarterly. We do quarterly right now. So we'll explain all that on the dashboard for anybody who wants to use it. This doesn't like, interrupt any of the other CMAs.

Matt Fowler [00:19:04]:
We're not turning anything off. We're turning an option on if you want. If you found today's demo compelling, give it a try. When you see the CMA Snap button come up and Triangle Glorify now will be handling, you know, initial calls. And if you have a question about stuff, just reach out to support like you always would if you've got complicated questions. No one knows this stuff better than Tom. So we'll be things up.

Tom Cunningham [00:19:27]:
And I'm gonna.

Matt Fowler [00:19:29]:
Yeah, I'm just gonna close by saying you've already got a couple of users in the Triangle area. I know that we do. Yeah.

Tom Cunningham [00:19:34]:
We've tested it thoroughly. It's been tested there for over a year. The last thing I'd like to throw in is, is that I do webinars really frequently.

Tom Cunningham [00:19:42]:
Right.

Tom Cunningham [00:19:42]:
And so hopefully we'll be able to publish links to the webinars. And so anybody that wants to jump on and kind of see how to, you know, get a surfing lesson as it were, just happy to have them and really appreciate the opportunity.

Matt Fowler [00:19:55]:
We'll get those scheduled for sure. If we have them scheduled by the time we run this podcast, we'll stick them in the show notes. All the subscribers watch the training tile on your dashboard and for messages coming in the blog posts along the middle about when you can expect to see CMASnap.

Tom Cunningham [00:20:13]:
All right, there you go, Tom.

Matt Fowler [00:20:15]:
Thanks for the time today, man. I really appreciate it.

Tom Cunningham [00:20:16]:
Hey, Matt, thank you very much for having me and. And we'll see you soon.

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