HOUSINGNEWSREPORT
matches between real estate buyers and sellers makes sense, but using that same property data to create winning matches between two singles looking for a good date may seem like a bit of a stretch. But that’s exactly one of many ways Foresight Information Services is innovatively solving problems with property data, according to CEO Jim Waters. “We’ve actually done it with dating sites,” said Waters, whose company plugs public record real estate data into its risk mitigation and identity verification products used in a variety of industries. “We can ask if they own or rent, and if they say own … we verify if that person is married or isn’t married, does own or doesn’t own … so you get a more truthful picture of who you are going to be dating.” Since it launched in 2011, Foresight’s products have been a hit with mortgage resellers who need to mitigate loan risk through borrower identity verification, including a check of property ownership, according to Waters. Although its roots are sunk deeply into the mortgage reseller industry, Foresight is continually looking for innovative applications of its data-powered products to solve problems in other industries, Waters said. “You can’t wake up every morning and say my company is going to do ‘X’ for the next 10 years,” he said. “If you just want real estate data, that’s fine, we have that. But if you have a specific problem, we have real estate data that can be used in different ways Problem Solvers, Not Data Providers
important in a world in which risk is more rampant, according to Waters. “For now we seem to be in the thick of a lot of people trying to say they are who they are not,” he said. “There are just a lot of innovative ways to be deployed to verify that people are who they say they are, do what they say they do and own what they say they own.”
to solve that problem. … Problem solvers separate themselves from data providers.”
Do They Own What They Say They Own? Along with the aforementioned online dating application, another innovate — although not necessarily intuitive — application of Foresight’s products has been in the world of law enforcement, according to Waters.
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There are just a lot of innovative ways to be deployed to verify that people are who they say they are, do what they say they do and own what they say they own.”
JimWaters | CEO of Foresight Information Services Needham, Massachusetts
Matching Investors with Inventory
“There are more innovative ways to verify people are who they say they are then ‘does the guy have a criminal record?’… we’re going to have to dig deeper,” he said, noting that mantra applies to a wide varietyof law enforcement agencies, from Homeland Security to local police serving a warrant. “For warrants they need to know who owns the home because they need to serve the warrant to the homeowner. “We have an app where if a police officer or sheriff pulls someone over and they don’t have an ID … we take input of a phone number, and we’ll bounce it off a number of different data sources,” Waters continued. “Our most premium service will offer homeownership and address as part of that. … We can bounce that address off the real estate data to see who owns that home.” Identify verification becomes increasingly
Seattle-based real estate analytics firm Audantic uses public record real estate data to match real estate investors with homeowners likely to sell — even if those homeowners don’t even know it themselves yet. “We apply machine learning and predictive analytics,” said Franklin Sarkett, CTO at Audantic, which is primarily geared toward top-tier investors purchasing at least 100 properties a year. “We give them a list of the highest probability to sell. … And they use that list to do direct marketing.” Those direct marketing lists have yielded such impressive results that Audantic has quickly expanded its client base over the past two years — primarily through word of
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