Good afternoon. My name is Josh Hernandez, and today we’re going to be taking a look at the CMA module inside Flexmls. Now for today, I’m going to show you just the bare bones CMA done in, I say three minutes, our total class time, we’ll go through it twice, will be about fifteen minutes. And before I begin, this is being broadcast in multiple MLSs. I’m going to be demonstrating in the Fargo Moorhead Association. So some of my fields and some of the listings may look different than what you’re used to seeing in your MLS. But all of the processes I show you will be able to be applied to your MLS. One other thing to note before we begin is I am not going to tell you what makes the best comparable listing for you. I’m going to show you how to create the searches, and then you are the market expert in your market.
So with the tools that I show you, you’re going to be deciding which listings to use as comparables, and I’m gonna show you the process for how that’s done and how that’s completed inside Flexmls. So really today, I’m only going to look at three things and I’ll run through it twice, like I said. First, I’m going to start my CMA by just looking for the comparables. So in both examples, I’m going to just start on the search page. Once I have search results, I’ll compare and select my comparables. And then I’m going to go and send those selected listings into the CMA module where I complete the CMA. So what that looks like here inside of Flexmls.
There are two ways you can begin a CMA on the search page. One is if you know that the listing in question that will be your subject property, if that has been on the MLS previously, that’s what I’ll show from my first example. If the listing that is going to be your potential listing as that property has never been on the MLS previously, I’ll show you how we can still create a search on that just using the map to find nearby listings, even though that particular property has never been listed on the MLS. So I’ll show you both versions. But the first version I am going to start off with, I’m going to begin my search with this search bar at the top of my screen. That search bar is called the quick launch bar, and I can type in the address for any listing that’s been on the MLS previously.
So for example, in this case, I’m going to type thirty eight forty six third at third Street East. And as I begin typing that in, you’ll notice I get the option to look at previous listings and look at the detailed information that starts popping up underneath the quick launch bar. And beneath that, there is a comparable search function. So if I know that this is the one that I want to use for my comparable search, I can begin that by just clicking right here. If I’m not positive and I say which one of these do I want to use and I want to look at the details, I can always click to view the listing details. As I look at this and say, okay, that does look like the one that I’m potentially trying to get as a listing, and then I can use this. I could go back up and use the comparable search here. Or anytime I’m on any search screen in Flexmls and I’m on the detail tab, there is an option in your detail links, that top row under the detail, to search for comparables. So that’s doing the same thing as that bar at the top. It’s just taking the listing that’s displaying the details right now. And when I click that, it opens up a brand new tab and starts a comparable search for me. Now when you start a search using that comparable search feature, what it does is it looks for the geographic location of that subject property. It draws a quarter mile radius around it, and by default, it’s looking at active, pending, and sold listings. And so you’ll see on my map, I see a few closed listings. I see one active. I see one pending down here. And if I look at my actual search, I see that it’s looking in the same property type, residential, and it’s looking for the exact same number of bedrooms and the exact same number of baths. So this is just a way to start finding similar listings. But you can always tweak this search. So I can build in different search criteria. So for example, maybe I want to include active, pending, and closed. I can keep them. Or maybe I’m just interested in looking at the sold listings because I want to find out what’s the average sold price for something that’s sold here in the past year. So I can always change my statuses if I would like. And now I see there are five. It tells me five here. As I scroll down, I may want to also say, well, the one that we’re starting with has five bedrooms. But what if there was one very similar that had four bedrooms or one that had six bedrooms? You can always modify your search criteria here as well. So I’m just gonna open that up a little bit and say bedrooms, four to six. And the same thing with bathrooms. Maybe I want three I’m gonna take out the max here and just go three plus bathrooms. And so now I’ve got potentially seven listings. I find when I start a search, it’s easier to start more general, and I can whittle my way down. And so I just am building my search first. Of course, you could look for square footage, above grade, total square footage, whatever the fields are that are important in your MLS as well. Maybe number of stories would be important in this location as well.
I’m gonna go with one story, and we’ll take a look here. So, again, what your goal is, as you create the search, is to take what you know so far about your subject property, square footage, location, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, create a search for similar properties. And then I begin looking and comparing my similar properties. So as I look at this, I can see this one that has a subject tag on it. That is actually the address three thousand eight hundred forty six that we had typed in. So it’s just letting me know that’s that’s what included in the results. So this was sold within the past year. But I can look at these and the list form, start comparing bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage. If I’m looking at these and want to make sure something is included, I can put a check mark next to that and select any of those ones that I want to make sure I keep included. And as I start looking at these, I’ve got five selected out of a total six. And I’m looking at these with the idea that the ones that I select I’ll use as comparable listings. And then I might drill down on the details. I might drill down on the photos and try to decide which ones actually make the best comparables. So if this one, I’m looking at it and it’s a little bit outside the range as far as square footage goes, maybe I’ll exclude that here. I’ll include it right now just so we have five. I like a nice odd number like that. Five listings is always good to start for my CMA. And once I make my selections by comparing them on the list, looking at the details, making my comparisons, I will take that one off, that one’s just a little little outside. And maybe even looking at the photos, making sure that, yes, these look like good comparables.
I am going to then come down and complete the CMA module. So when I complete the CMA module, I go up to my actions at the top right of the screen, and I’m just going to click on CMA. And then if I wanted all search results included, I click use all results. But since we’ve already started thinking which ones do we want to use as our comparables, I’ll just say use the ones that I’ve selected. And now those will be in my comps. I have three CMA types. Today, we’re just going to look at the full CMA. As I come underneath that, I’m going to see a statistical average field and total square foot, total finished square footage. The fields available in your MLS may look a little bit different than this, but I’ll show you where this statistical average field is. It’s on one of the tabs as we work our way through the CMA process. So I’ll click next, and then I complete the CMA module. For the cover page, I say who is this for? And then, of course, if I’m going to be meeting with Jeff today, maybe I’ll prepare this using today’s date. Or maybe I’m meeting with Jeff on Friday, I’ll print that by stopping by the office before I meet with Jeff on Friday. I’ll just use the current date. Who is this prepared by? I’ll just use my business card with signature and logo. And then you do have room for comments here on the subject tab. So you can type in and say something about the CMA. Now because we’re kind of going through just the broad strokes of the CMA today, I’m not actually going to type anything in there.
I’m going to move from my cover page and over to the subject tab. And here, I can type in the MLS or the listing information manually. But because this was on the MLS previously, I can auto populate it from the previous version of that listing. So it will auto populate the address and any of those fields that are underneath. So in order to auto populate that, if I click on that, I need the MLS number. Well, this opened up in a different tab, so I see here was that three thousand eight hundred forty six third Street. I’m just going to grab that MLS number. I’ll copy that just to speed that up for us today. And then I’ll click submit. And then you’ll see it populated that with the previous photo from that previous version of the listing. It also then took the previous information from that previous version and populating everything here. If something is inaccurate, maybe that information is outdated, you can always change that. And if there’s something that didn’t auto populate or that you don’t want to use in the comparison, you can always click the trash can here. Now when you have the field set that you do want to compare, I move over to the next tab at the top, comps. And with the comps, I’m going to see those four that I had selected. I can rearrange the order here if I’d like, but since I started from a search, there’s really nothing additional for me to do here. There are some additional options. We’ll get into that. If you come back for our next class, that’ll be a forty five minute class on the full CMA itself.
But I’m just going to move from comps now and click on adjustments. The adjustments tab is completely optional. And because we are looking at this as a quick way to do the CMA today, I’m not going to make any adjustments. And I can always reflect that in my cover page at the bottom in those remarks saying no adjustments were made, this is not a formal appraisal. So adjustments would be adjusting the sold price based off of certain criteria. So maybe one of the listings had more bathrooms or more bedrooms than the subject property, we can make an adjustment to that sold price. So when it’s giving us a suggested sale price for our subject, that’s what the adjustments do. But for today, I’m just going to skip that entirely, and I’m going to move on to my summary tab. There is nothing for me that needs to be completed on the summary tab. I’ll see a summary of closed listings. If I had selected other statuses, they’d be broken apart by statuses here as well. I’ll see the sold price, the adjusted price if we did make adjustments, but we’re not doing that today, Low average, median, and high comparisons. And then our market analysis. And when we chose the full CMA and I said, I’ll show you where that total square footage field that we selected at the bottom comes into play. That’s just our overall market analysis where it will give me my average total square footage for those four listings. Average list price per total square footage, average sold price. So that selection on the very first page when we started this just influences what the price per column, average per total square foot, sold price per square foot is going to display in this summary tab. And finally, we come to the recommendation page, and all this does is look at our low ends, the low adjusted price, the high adjusted price takes an average here and gives us an average recommended price. That’s not hard coded in, so you can change that whatever you would like. If I look at the property and see it’s new, got a lot of new upgrades in and things like that, maybe we change that recommended price. And finally, that brings us to the finish tab.
And the finish tab just says what information from the CMA pages that we just completed do you actually want to include in the CMA? The cover page, the map, you can go a satellite view. So maybe it’s by a golf course or a body of water, you want to highlight that by using the satellite version of the map. A description of our subject property, side by side comparison of our listings, our comps with the subject property. If you want to include the search parameters I used, you can click that here. And then that price recommendation page, that’s that tab. And some charts, I’ll show you those as well. And finally, as we come to the bottom of that, since we’re preparing this for Jeff, I might want to show him individual listing information for the comps. So I can use those listing details and just print the listing detail sheets for those comp listings and include that for Jeff as well. And you can save the CMA, print that, email it to Jeff as a link. I’m just going to click the view option right now so you can see what that looked like. So we have our cover page. Remember that cover page would have our marks. I didn’t type in any remarks there. I chose my default business card at the bottom here with my profile photo and logo. There is always a disclaimer that this is not a formal appraisal that’s on the bottom of every cover page. And then I had my satellite view of our comps, where those are in location, to our subject property. The subject property is right at the tip of the pushpin. And then it tells me the distance those are from the subject as well. Our cover page for the subject property. Our comparable properties will always include the subject property in that left hand column. So if you have a lot of comparables and as people scroll down or page through, they don’t have to flip back to the subject page. They can always just see the subject in the left hand column. Price analysis gives me those first five comparables here, shows me the listings list price, sold price, and if there were any adjustments, the adjusted price. And it demonstrates where those fall in relation to our actual recommended price. And remember, I adjusted that to seven hundred thousand. Low average, median, and high, and you just see where our recommended price fits in with the average, median, high, and low. And then our summary page, our statistical analysis here of those sold listings, and then our recommendation page.
So again, that photo that we had borrowed and then our low, high, and recommended price as a separate page. And then also I said, let’s include those listing reports for our comps as well. So when I give this to Jeff, he can make sure he agrees with those comps that we used. So that is creating the CMA. I’m going to run through that in just three minutes now. But this time, instead of using our quick launch at the top and using the comparable search, if the listing has never been on the MLS previously, I won’t be able to search for that in the quick launch bot. Instead, I would take a quick search, and with my quick search, I just start building my search. What am I looking for? The location. If you want to search on the map and draw a radius on the map, you use your map tools over on the right side. There is a red push pin near the bottom of the map tools, and there I locate my address.
And I’m going to use a nearby one, so thirty eight fifty four third street east, and then seven eight zero seven eight for our, oops, five eight zero seven eight. Or a zip code. So that just locates, I’m gonna draw a radius. In this example, I’ll just do a one mile radius. My previous radius was smaller than that. So now I’ve drawn a one mile radius. I’m going to click closed. I select the statuses that I want to include in my search. And of course, I’m going to include those sold listings here. I’ll go back one year for those sold listings.
And then, again, I start building my search similar I want to find similar listings. So similar number of bedrooms, similar number of bathrooms. So maybe I’ll do my five to six beds, five to six baths, or four plus baths, or whatever it may be. If I’m in an area that has a lot of different property subtypes, there are condos mixed in with single family, you might want to come in and under your property subtype, make sure that you select the correct subtype to make sure that I’m getting the best results that I can. And then again, I go through that process. I can compare the listings on the list, the detail, the photos. And as I’m making those comparisons, I’m just gonna grab few of these.
I’ll grab four, five. Yeah. We’ll grab five.
So I’ll grab one more. Again, you would take your time, compare those, compare the details, compare the photos, get the absolute best comparables that you can. When I’m looking at results, instead of seeing all fifty six and I just want to start comparing those five that I’ve selected, remember, you can always just change that and view only those five selected here. That makes it a little bit easier to decide if I want to keep all of those. When I’m sure that I’ve got the ones that I want to keep, then I just take my five selected listings, go to CMA at the top of the screen, and then I’ll click on use selected. Once I’m here, again, I’m going to select the CMA type, and today we did the full CMA. We used our statistical average field. And remember, we saw the page that that appears on, total square footage. And when I click on next, now I just complete each of these pages. So maybe Jeff’s got two properties here. So this one was right next door. Again, our cover page, our subject. This time, we wouldn’t have that option to auto populate it if the listing has never been on the MLS before. So you have to manually type in the address, manually type in the number of the information for bedrooms, total bathrooms, total square footage. So I would want to do a tax search and get that information and populate that manually and just type that information in. My comps, though, again, we had already selected our comps. We can change the order of the comps here. Adjustments, in today’s class, we skipped that and went directly to summary. Our summary page right here just gives us all of the quick statistical information. The recommendation, again, seven twenty one is what this one prices it at because I use different comps this time. And then lastly, on the finish, I just select what we’re going to be looking at. Now I don’t have a map, so my subject property won’t be on this map because I didn’t actually go in and map it on this. So we can still take a look take a look at what that looks like, and it’ll show me where those are located, but there’s no subject property here per se. Also, you will notice I don’t have a photo of the subject property. As we come over to the subject tab, you can upload a photo. So if I do have a photo, not from a previous listing, but maybe I did a drive by, took a nice photo of the house.
I could always go out into my files, choose my file and grab whatever that may look like.
Didn’t do that on that one, so there we go.
And that just takes us to that finish tab. So I did the same process for both of those, worked my way to create my search, select the listings, send them to the full CMA, and worked my way across those tabs. But I just started that slightly different.
One way we started it in our first example was if the address had been on the MLS previously, as a previous listing, you can just do that quick comparable search, or you can just begin the search itself from any search page and start building the search. And in both examples, I use the map. That’s not strictly necessary, but oftentimes it’s useful to find nearby listings, which is why I included that for those today. Now that does take me to the end of just running the CMA as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you want to know more about doing the full CMA, we are going to have a full forty five minute class on that coming up if you go to the Flexmls Academy. You can always come out here and go to the upcoming webinars and register for any of those upcoming webinars that you see here. So on the twenty fifth, we’ve got the full CMA coming out here. And even if you’re not able to attend, you can always sign up for that. You’ll get the recording via email. And you’ll also notice that any of our recorded trainings that we present via webinar do end up in that recorded training folder here as well. With that, I want to thank you for attending today. Thank you and have a great rest of your afternoon.
