Navigating Broker Price Opinion

Making property valuation through Broker Price Opinion (BPO) is one of the essential skills that realtors must have and same thing applies to real estate virtual assistant (REVA) because they are assisting the clients behind the scenes however for me who are still on the learning process of becoming a real estate virtual assistant, I was immediately informed that doing BPO tasks are tedious but once you get used to the process, it would be easy peasy.

In doing Broker Price Opinion as a student, I encounter some challenges.

The main thing that I am concerned when it comes to the challenges is through the lack of information or where to get the accurate and legit one. In order to get the accurate information, you need to be a licensed realtor to access the County website and also the MLS system. It is understandable that not all people can have access to County website either online or onsite due to privacy and confidentiality of the past and current owners of the property and there are potential risks that the information you acquire can be subjected for abuse. If you want to get information through onsite, you need to have information and undergo a process and rules as provided by the County office otherwise the misuse of information can result to violation.

As for MLS system, different realty firms are using a similar or a completely different MLS system and to get access it's only the realtor knows. I think using MLS system makes a Realty firm unique from the other, making services quick and get accurate information as possible however I also discovered that pulling comparable, it doesn’t have to be too complex, and you can actually do it from scratch. By knowing this, you can easily assess, plan and strategize even if the MLS system is not available.

Another thing is that is challenging for me as a student is to find out different MLS systems that are used by companies in real time and we need of more of hands-on approach of navigating it for example using a simulation version of the real one so we can practice. I also do feel that there are different scenarios when it comes to identifying whether the property is on Sales & Financing Concessions and Fee Simple and if you are lacking information or if there are discrepancies of it, it is difficult to provide a clear distinction for what the property is.

As for making adjustments, we were informed that the banks provide a standard guideline, and we have to make research of how much the property cost on average installing or repairing. The challenging part of this is each states have different pricing, and it can be also updating on a yearly basis so if you get the wrong information, it will affect your property valuation.

From my overall experience these are the challenges that I come up with and even though there are struggles once you finally completed it and aware of these challenges, it gives you more room of opportunity to improve. I do believe that as we gain more exposure of doing it, we understand about it deeply and develop our confidence and become effective in making property valuations for our clients and make right decisions after.