To:        All WinTOTAL Aurora (version 5) users
From:    Adam Calvery, VP Appraisal Products, a la mode, inc.
Re:        Aurora: July 17th update is ready

The update scheduled for today is now available on our servers.  To download and install it, click the "Get Updates" button on the toolbar in your Appraisal Desktop.  For a detailed list of what’s changed, click here to go to the update page on our Aurora status website.

One of the most valuable changes in this update, in my opinion (and hopefully yours too), is a new feature we added which could help you generate additional non-lender revenue right now.  As some overheated markets cool and as the national media beats the “housing bubble” drum, it’s a great time to tap into all those homeowners who are wondering, “Is my house worth less now?” 

To help you do that in the most efficient manner, we’ve created a simple plugin for WinTOTAL which ties into our XSellerate marketing system (XSellerate is included with all Enterprise Appraiser XSites, and all of you Elite users have it too).  The subject addresses from all of your old reports can be exported in one step to XSellerate, where you can print them on mailing labels and simultaneously add a marketing piece suggesting that they hire you to reappraise the home due to changing conditions.  We’ve included several letters and a postcard so you can quickly get started marketing to the “current resident” of these addresses.  

Since you’ve appraised the homes before, you’ve got the least amount of work to do on a new appraisal.  And since you can say that you’re the one who appraised it before and that you’re not looking for a commission like an agent would, you’re more likely to be the easy choice for them, essentially an “impulse buy” to assess the value of their largest single asset.

To try it out after the update, go to your Appraisal Desktop and then click “Tools”, then “Export addresses to XSellerate”.  Obviously, this is just one of the many revenue-generating benefits of XSellerate.  If you haven’t tried it before, I strongly encourage you to do so now. 

Before I go, just two more important items:

• Our Marshall & Swift integration with Aurora is now in use by our beta testers.  It launches SwiftEstimator.com on demand, passes the subject information seamlessly, and transfers the completed cost estimate into your report.  Look for it in WinTOTAL next month.  
• We continue to steam ahead on desktop billing.  Building a desktop billing module for Aurora (with migration and integration tools too) is a very, very big project and we want it done right, not just fast, so I decided to delay the early release download for a short time while we address some issues we’ve found internally.  I know I said we’d have it out for a test download on July 10^th, so I appreciate your patience as we reset the download.  I know how important this is to many of you, and will let you know as soon as we have a more solid date.

That’s it for today.  Thank you for your time, and as always, thanks for your continued business.


Adam Calvery
VP, Appraisal Products
a la mode, inc.