Workshops and Instruction

One of my great joys in life is teaching. I’ve trained many modelers and mass appraisers throughout my career. In addition to the free resources that are available, I’m making some of my workshops available here.  Pick the option that works best for you.

Workshops will always be available on-demand online. Fill out the interest form and I will send you links to the sessions and materials. 

Workshops are offered live online, subject to demand. Fill out the interest form and I will contact you with dates and times when a live workshop will be offered

If you have a group. A workshop can be given live at your facility. Contact me to discuss details.  

If you are interested in a workshop on a topic that is not currently offered, feel free to express your interest and we can discuss setting one up.    

Modeling Workshop — Coming Soon!

Residential Modeling in R or SPSS – RM01 R or RM01S 

A workshop for beginning to intermediate property valuation modelers. Workshop consists of eight 90 minute sessions. Sessions include 40 to 50 minutes instruction of core concepts and 30 to 40 minutes of practical hands-on coding in either of two commonly used platforms – R and SPSS. Live workshops will have opportunities for Q&A.

Participants work with a sample set of 3,200 sales which requires scrubbing and transformation for use in a model. Data set includes attributes for Location; Transaction date; Type of Improvement; Building size; Lot size; Improvement Condition; Garage type and spaces; Central Air; Distance to Park and Distance to Transportation. By the end of the workshop, participants have built a simple, model that performs well, and will have a template for building a residential sales model which should be usable with any typical CAMA dataset. 

Workshop Outline:

Session 1 – General Introduction to Modeling Principles

  • How models work /Modeler’s mindset/Types of models/Data quality analysis/
  • Types of attributes/Representation/Transformations/Removing outliers/Evaluating model performance

Session 2 – Working with Data

  • Exploration/Analysis/Scrubbing

Session 3 – Binary and Categorical Transformations

  • Type of Improvement/Garage/Central Air

Session 4 – Scalar Transformations

  • Building Square footage/Lot Square footage

Session 5 – Spatial Transformations

  • Measuring distance/Determining the best measurement/Distance to Park/Distance to Transportation
  • Overview of spatial modeling techniques

Session 6 – Time Trending

  • Identifying time periods/Building an adjustment matrix

Session 7 – Building an Additive Model

  • Advantages and disadvantages of additive models/Regression methods/Outlier removal/Performance metrics

Session 8 – Building a Multiplicative Model

  • Advantages and disadvantages of multiplicative models/Regression statements/Additional outlier removal methods
  • Additional model diagnostics/Collinearity/More Performance metrics