Similar to other relatively small CAD’s, the employees in the Fannin Tax Assessor’s office often need to take on multiple responsibilities. The office has a team of 15 people, including a Chief Appraiser, Chief Deputy, staff for exemptions, appraisers, deeds and mapping personnel, and tax collectors.

The process of managing deeds was especially challenging. The Fannin County Clerk’s office sent deeds on a CD to the Tax Assessor’s office, where Linda, the deeds and mapping clerk, manually entered deed data into the Computer-Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) system. On busy days, processing 20 deeds could take Linda the entire day, preventing her from focusing on her mapping duties. This inefficiency led to approximately 2,000 taxpayer inquiries annually, because it was either challenging to focus on her dual role working with maps, or because of the typos and errors in the manual deeds data entry process.

When Linda's deeds supervisor, who also helped process deeds, announced her retirement, it was perfect timing that the office discovered Just Appraised at a conference in Texas.

Fannin CAD launched with the Just Appraised flagship Deed Automation product in 2021. Just Appraised leverages advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to streamline the change of ownership process for local government tax assessment and county clerk offices. The flagship Deeds Product incorporates optical character recognition and natural language processing to allow for greater efficiency and accuracy when processing ownership transfers.

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The Just Appraised deeds automation solution integrates seamlessly with Fannin CAD's Harris Govern PACS CAMA system. Key features include:

• Automated import of deeds and recorded documents from the County Clerk’s office.
• Automated Parcel matching to the CAMA system.
• Field extraction and population into the CAMA with 98-99% accuracy, shifting the focus from manual data entry to data review.

By leveraging Just Appraised, Fannin CAD transformed its deeds processing, and has since gone on to adopt other Just Appraised workflow solutions for the Appraisal District.

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The impact was immediate and substantial. Linda’s time spent processing deeds decreased from 8 hours per day to just 1–2 hours, allowing her to focus on mapping work and supporting a resource constrained team. With the retirement of the deeds supervisor, the office avoided hiring a replacement, saving on full-time employee costs. Other key benefits included:

• Reduced taxpayer inquiries: With fewer data entry errors, the number of calls and emails from taxpayers dropped significantly.
• Enhanced reporting: Linda appreciated the ability to pull performance metrics easily and share them with her supervisor.
• Efficient onboarding: The built-in chatbox allowed Linda to receive immediate support from the Just Appraised team

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The overall cost of Just Appraised was far less than the expense of backfilling the supervisor’s position. Linda’s final thoughts summed up the experience:

"Just Appraised has become my best friend. I’ve shared my experience with other counties and would gladly talk to anyone!"