With speed and scalability emerging as priorities for commercial real estate (CRE) valuations, Apprise by Walker & Dunlop has invested in building a national platform through a proprietary application and developed intuitive dashboards that convey valuation trends and recent sales data for clients.
Project Details
Organization: Apprise by Walker & Dunlop
Mission: Redefining valuation in commercial real estate.
Initiative Began: January 2024
With many national firms still depending on Word docs and Excel models, valuable market insights were being buried and lenders had vastly different outputs from market to market. To address these inefficiencies, in 2020, Walker & Dunlop partnered with GeoPhy to launch Apprise, combining CRE finance expertise with data science and technology. The goal was to build a web-based, end-to-end platform that could fundamentally change how valuations are done.
The platform required a multimillion-dollar investment across several years. Apprise developed the technology for report production, cloud-based infrastructure for the national collaboration, and a centralized database to capture every data point across every asset type. It also hand-selected forward-thinking appraisers aligned with this new approach.
According to the firm, what sets Apprise apart is the ability to combine institutional-grade data with deep local market expertise, enabling faster delivery, higher reliability, and greater transparency for clients. It notes the return on investment was clear. Apprise serves private lenders and major banks, and it has become a preferred provider for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac appraisals. In addition, its appraisers have conducted over 4,000 assignments with government-sponsored enterprise firms in the last five years to help meet the demands of lenders with some of the most stringent underwriting requirements.
At the end of 2024, Apprise completed its rollout across all multifamily asset types.
“Our proprietary Apprise application is a one-of-a-kind solution that has transformed how appraisal professionals process and interpret vast volumes of normalized market comparables and demand drivers,” says Meghan Czechowski, senior vice president and head of Apprise by Walker & Dunlop. “By delivering real-time valuations faster than the competition, we significantly enhance operational efficiency, scale local expertise, and increase production capacity per employee. Leveraging cutting-edge technology and deep local market knowledge, we have doubled our market share and increased our valuation volume 62% year over year.”
