Xactware's Pricing Data
In a free-market economy, prices for construction material and labor vary, often significantly among suppliers and contractors within the same city. This creates a strong need in the insurance restoration industry for comprehensive and independently researched and validated pricing information. This is exactly what Xactware provides. Xactware’s Pricing Data Service Team reports cost information based on actual prices and transactions (completed bids) that have occurred recently in your area. This information is invaluable to estimators who need to reference current, local prices that are based neither on the highest nor the lowest price in their market.
Xactware currently researches and reports on structural repair and cleaning cost information for more than 470 geographic regions on two continents. Each of these databases of costs is fully researched, validated, and supported by Xactware’s in-house team of professionals.
For personal property (contents), the industry need is quite different: customers need to be able to see and compare actual costs from multiple stores. They also need to be able to search for specific brands and model numbers, or search by features and compare discontinued models with currently available equivalents. Xactware’s contents replacement database, therefore, incorporates actual product data feeds from more than 40 different national retail chains.
As a result, Xactware’s published cost information has become the most widely used pricing data in the industry.
With this pricing data, you’ll be able to:
- Get continuous, comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable pricing information.
- Significantly reduce the amount of time that it takes to research and/or negotiate pricing for individual items.
Pricing Data Release Schedule
All of Xactware’s price lists are updated and published on an ongoing basis according to established publication schedules. For example, Xactware’s pricing data on structural repair and cleaning (including contents cleaning) is published monthly in North America, and quarterly in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Xactware’s personal property replacement pricing data is published weekly.
All Xactware price list databases are available for download 24/7 from the Internet via Xactware’s products.
Pricing Data Services Team
Xactware’s in-house Pricing Data Services team consists of construction and restoration professionals who have more than 400 years’ combined experience in the construction and restoration industries.
This team, which has been providing building cost data to the insurance industry since 1989, includes:
- Licensed general contractors
- Certified Master Inspectors (CMI)
- Certified LEEDs (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) AP (Accredited Professional)
- RIA certified restoration technicians (CRTs)
- IICRC certified journeyman fire and smoke restorers (JSRs)
- IICRC certified journeyman water restorers (JWRs)
- IICRC certified water damage restoration technicians (WRTs)
- IICRC Certified Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Technicians (SRT)
- IICRC certified odor control technicians (OCTs)
- Mold and sewage remediation technicians
- IICRC certified upholstery cleaning technicians (UFTs)
- IICRC certified carpet cleaning technicians (CCTs)
- IICRC certified carpet repair and reinstallation technicians (RRTs)
Xactware’s Pricing Research and Methodology
In order to provide you with the most accurate and defensible pricing information available, Xactware takes a unique, scientific approach to researching and reporting on market pricing for the insurance repair industry. This approach is based on a proven five-phased, iterative process.
- Phase 1: Conduct market pricing research.
- Xactware currently researches and analyzes millions of market price points each year from multiple, third-party sources. These include:
- thousands of in-field estimates that are submitted to Xactware every day (i.e. estimates actually used to settle claims)
- market surveys of industry professionals
- retail pricing research
- unit-price research based on surveys with over 100,000 contractors, insurance carriers, and independent adjusters
- pricing feedback from in-field users
- independent pricing verification requests
- customer-specific cost data
- catastrophe-specific pricing research
- additional research surveys
- multiple third-party sources for data such as worker’s comp, federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, and so on
- many other research initiatives
- Phase 2: Review and verify all the market research gathered; conduct data integrity checks.
- Phase 3: Analyze all the pricing research and perform a proprietary cluster analysis on various subsets of that research to identify the mid-range market price points. This proprietary process was designed by Brigham Young University Ph.D.’s and is monitored by an econometrician. (An econometrician holds a master’s degree in statistics and a doctorate in economics.)
- Phase 4: Report on and publish market pricing research results.
- Phase 5: Evaluate and refine our pricing research and reporting methodology.
For example, the building cost data used in Xactware’s products comes from:
- Time and materials costs
- Over 40,000 providers of materials, equipment and labor
- Over 84,000 surveys each year*
- Analysis of actual damage repair estimates (transaction-based research)
- Over 3 million estimates each year*
- Over 6 million data points each month*
- Direct surveys of construction market costs
- New construction/remodeling
- General contracts and sub-contractors
- Approximately 2,000 surveys each month*
*2009 values/averages
Xactware’s Position on Market Pricing
Xactware is an independent, third-party company that researches and reports on industry pricing. We use pricing information from general contractors, subcontractors, insurance carriers, insurance adjusters, and a host of other industry professionals as we research and report on the average market price for each price-list item. Xactware goes to great lengths to ensure that no one party or industry segment has any undue influence on the pricing data that we research and report on.
Pricing Data Feedback
Pricing feedback is very valuable to Xactware. It helps us ensure that the pricing information that we research, analyze, and report is as accurate as possible. Since Xactware is always researching and analyzing a range of prices, it’s critical that everyone who uses the information that Xactware publishes provides feedback. If you have any feedback on the pricing that Xactware publishes, we invite and encourage you to share that feedback with us via the following options:
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Option 1: Submit your feedback through the Feedback option in the Services menu of our products. This process gathers information on the items, prices, and quantities used in estimates that are marked Complete and packages it for delivery to XactAnalysis.
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Option 2: Submit feedback on individual item prices and labor rates any time day or night via the XactAnalysis SP website. You can visit www.xactnet.com to login and submit your feedback.
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Option 3: Send an email to Xactware:
Please note: To expedite your request, please provide as much information as possible regarding each line item in question. Include the name of the company and person submitting the request, the city in question, the line item in question, the price which you feel should be reviewed, and contact information for contractors, sub-contractors, suppliers, and so forth who can verify the price submitted.
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Option 4: Submit your feedback to Xactware via fax at 1-800-329-9228.