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61 confidentiality that has come to be expected between a homeowner and appraiser. And just as important, the information provided to the appraiser needs to be trusted and authenticated. What is to keep a desperate homeowner from taking pictures of an upscale property and submitting them as their own? What keeps a homeowner from stretching the truth about upgrades or remodels? In the words of President Ronald Regan, "Trust, but verify." is is the key to accepting homeowner-provided information as a credible source for the appraiser. At Bradford Technologies, we have focused the strength of our service, TruView, which is able to authenticate information provided by homeowners while preserving the privacy and confidentiality of the homeowner-appraiser relationship. When evaluating services that allow a homeowner to provide information, there are eight criteria that the service should be judged on. 1) Does the service geocode the property address? Can the homeowner's property address be geocoded? Can Google or Bing find it on a map? If they cannot, the property should not be eligible for homeowner-sourced information. 2) e homeowner's smartphone, either iPhone or Android, needs to have its GPS location setting turned on so the photos are embedded with a timestamp and geocode revealing the location and time each photo was taken. When evaluating a service, one should ask: Does the service force the homeowner to take a test photo to ensure the GPS setting is turned on before starting? Does it continue to check every photo to ensure the GPS is not turned off ? 3) Access to the smartphone's photo gallery needs to be prohibited. is means that the service must not allow the homeowner to upload photos that reside in their photo library. Only photos taken by the camera and directly uploaded are acceptable. is ensures that the photos have not been tampered with or compromised in any way. 4) GPS spoofing must be detectible. Spoofing is the ability to change the GSP setting in a smartphone. It's easy to do, and the service must be capable of detecting whether the smartphone has been spoofed, and if it has, the process should be stopped. 5) Homeowners should provide an affidavit attesting to the accuracy of the information. For example, the service should force the homeowner to affirm with an "I Agree" button before proceeding, confirming the information and photographs are to be used to prepare a report that the lender may use as part of their loan determination process—and that if the information is found to be fraudulent, it may adversely affect that determination. 6) e service must include visual and tabular verification of the location where the photos were taken relative to the geocode of the property address. Because timestamps and geocodes are long numbers, it's easy to overlook any discrepancies. e service should provide the appraiser a map showing the property location and the locations where all the photos were taken. While GPS data involves a margin of error, all the photos should be in the vicinity of the property. 7) Maintaining the privacy of the homeowner's information is critical. As with a traditional home inspection, the homeowner expects the information they provide to be treated with the same care that protects their privacy and confidentiality. URL links to the data that can be easily emailed or forwarded or passed around an office should never be used to access the information, because it's too easy to compromise the trust of the homeowner. We have implemented two-factor authentication to safeguard the information. Only the homeowner and appraiser know the two factors. Two-factor authentication is the same technique used in ATM machines. 8) e service should assist the appraiser in processing the homeowner's information. Once the appraiser has the data, what features does the service have to assist in converting the raw data into actionable information that can be used in the appraisal analysis? We believe that getting authenticated homeowner information is just half of the process. e second half is processing that information in such a way that empowers the appraiser to efficiently include the information in the appraisal report. Any service that meets the above eight criteria will create a strong foundation for trusting the homeowner supplied data as well as provide the efficiency needed by the appraiser. is foundation will set in motion the next wave of innovation, which will be the creation of virtual inspection platforms. Ultimately, the innovations we are seeing today will take the appraiser from their traditional legacy processes into a digital world where they are better connected and able to service millennial homeowners anytime, anywhere, and from any device. We all wish these innovations were not being driven by a global pandemic. Nonetheless, they remind us that a stronger, more efficient appraisal process is always possible. Jeff Bradford is the Founder and CEO at Bradford Technologies. His company has been providing software services to the appraisal profession for over 33 years. Today, his company is leading the digital transformation of the appraiser's desktop to a cloud-based valuation platform so appraisers can compete in the entire valuation market. Prior to founding Bradford Technologies, Bradford worked at companies such as Apple Computer, Structural Dynamics Research, and FMC Central Engineering Labs.