Greer Advisors, LLC

 Innovators in Real Estate Analytics
 
   Company Overview

Greer Advisors, LLC is a multi-disciplined company capable of delivering a variety of services for the commercial real estate industry, including appraisal review, appraisal management, valuation and advisory services, litigation support and tax appeal.

Appraisal review is the largest business line and typically involves a desk review of a commercial appraisal report. Field reviews are available in certain locations. The review document is normally on a Greer Advisors review template but can be on a client-provided template (with certain volume requirements). An appraisal review completed on the Greer Advisors review template typically runs 20-plus pages long and is perhaps the most-comprehensive review in the business. Three philosophies drive the reviews: 1) ensure the value and other appraisal conclusions are right, 2) write a review that will pass any regulatory audit / exam, i.e. protect the bank, and 3) provide a review document that is so comprehensive that the client does not need to read the appraisal report, i.e. save time for downstream users of the appraisal report. Anything of any importance within the appraisal is in the review. A Greer Advisors review summarizes the key physical and economic characteristics of the property being appraised, summarizes the sales, rents, and the methodologies used to value the property. During the review process, the subject property and all comparables are geocoded (when addresses are noted in the appraisal) as well as aged. These two additional data points are compared to other reviews and are the primary aspects of Fraud Guard platforms and FNMA's Collateral Underwriter. Data from the appraisal is databased, including the rent roll and Income/expense history and forecast. The data extracted from the appraisal is also available to the client via a variety of data file types, e.g. XML, CSV, etc. The current appraisal review platform can capture roughly 50,000+/- fields from an appraisal. However, the average is roughly 1,000 fields from a typical non-complex commercial appraisal. Appraisals with multiple property types, multiple rent/sale data sets, and multiple discounted cash flows increase the number of captured fields. In addition to obtaining a comprehensive professional review from a third-party MAI, many clients find tremendous value in the database files, which can be incorporated into a variety of internal data systems.

Advisory services include portfolio optimization recommendations, strategic planning, portfolio monitoring, development of risk rating systems, indexing systems, compliance, web site/data delivery systems, econometric modeling, and a variety of ad hoc services upon request.

The company also hosts the www.AppraisalRegulations.com web site. The site is known as the “industry source” for appraisal-related regulations.

Mr. Greer is a recognized innovator regarding advanced data analysis and modeling for commercial real estate. Throughout his career, he has been a pioneer in real estate analytics. In 1986, Mr. Greer created a home appreciation index utilizing an interest-rate based logarithmic regression model. In the mid 1980's, working for a Ph.D. at a major accounting firm, he utilized desktop software (SPSS) to run econometric regression models in support of litigation and various consulting assignments. In 1990, in his demonstration appraisal for his MAI designation, he utilized multiple regression analysis on sales and rental data to support rent and value conclusions. In the early 1990s, he also used various statistical software packages (SPSS, Minitab, Predict, SAS) for demand modeling. In 1996, Mr. Greer pioneered electronic delivery of appraisal and market reports within Bank of America by using Adobe Writer and posting the reports to an internal web site with the bank. At the time, the bank had more than a dozen appraisal offices, and Mr. Greer's was the only one with a web site/server. Mr. Greer also created "standardized adjustments" for the appraisers he managed, by downloading all the sales for a given property type within a given area (typically county) on a periodic basis, he would perform hedonic regression analysis on the top dozen factors that influenced value. Generally, the top four or five factors were incorporated into the adjustment model, aka "Standardized Adjustments." Ultimately, the "write up" and XL templates were posted on the office server, and all appraisers used the results. The analysis was ran every six to twelve months. In 1998, Mr. Greer was creating an automated valuation model using a "similarity indexing" system for comp selection, standardized adjustments, and a value conclusion with a measure of reliability. The work stopped after the Bank of America - Nations Bank merger. Whether building automated valuation models, comp selection and standardized adjustment models, or working on loan loss forecasting, Greer has consistently been a proponent of advanced technical analysis.

In the mid- to late 1990s, Mr. Greer also used data from CoStar to create farming lists for loan officers. Rather than the typical 1-2% closing success, Mr. Greer's lists yielded up to 8-10% closing success by excluding properties that were difficult to pass the credit approval process. For example, old buildings, high land to building ratios, metal buildings, heavy industrial buildings, anything recently purchased or refinanced, and many other items. In 2004/05, Mr. Greer also helped develop a prospecting tool for the Commercial Real Estate Banking group. He used the Construction Pipeline from F.W. Dodge, and built a web-based prospecting tool which enabled loan officers to search by developer location, property type, building volume and many other features. Mr. Greer added FIPS coding and correction many of the errors in a parent-child relationship table.

Greer Advisors authors the “Walls Street and Commercial Real Estate" newsletter on a periodic basis, which provides current insight into trends and yields from Wall Street pertaining to CMBS and REIT bonds, CMBx derivatives and a host of other financial statistics. The newsletter is free of charge.

Greer Advisors, LLC was founded by Everett Allen Greer, who is the Managing Member of the company. The company’s focus is to apply advanced technology to improve the analysis of commercial real estate.


Greer Advisors, LLC



Tel.:   213.985.3800

New York:  646.867.1600   /   San Francisco:  415.233.6300   /   Los Angeles:  213.985.3800
Dallas:  214.347.7500   /   Miami:  786.629.9600   /   San Diego:  619.618.2500
Paris:  011.33.1.76.63.32.14   /   London:  011.44.020.7993.5849


Paris and London were closed in 2014, then re-opened in January 2019

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EAG@GreerAdvisors.com


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