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Articles
"Location,
Location, Location: Service Firm Sees
Opportunity", (c) Tom Sawyer, Engineering News
Record, 4/18/2007
A business-information provider,
whose services include monitoring real estate for lenders, announced on April 16
that it will begin selling access to its vast database of exceedingly accurate
parcel information.
First American Corp., Santa Ana, Calif., calls the offering ParcelPoint. It
uses proprietary processes to track latitude and longitude coordinates to parcel
and address data and can then link the location to other information. David
Rogers, director of marketing of First American Flood Data Services, says the
system was developed internally to help the company provide parcel-by-parcel
flood-zone risk data to the mortgage and insurance industries. First American
guarantees the accuracy of its flood-zone determinations, says Rogers, “so we
need to be incredibly accurate.”
The company also contracts to alert clients when Federal Emergency Management
Agency flood-map changes or zoning issues affect mortgaged properties. Such
tasks require First American to have a large staff in more than 2,000 offices
around the country to constantly update and expand information.
“We service over 80 million parcels for the life of their loans,” Rogers
says. “As FEMA remaps an area, we keep the mortgage holder advised.” In Houston,
for example, 100,000 residents outside the flood plain recently were mapped in,
he says.
First American reported revenue of $8.5 billion in 2006. It has built its
data either from 2-D maps and aerial photos or by incorporating and enhancing
GIS data from counties that have it. The company has committed to expanding
coverage to include the majority of the estimated 144 million parcels in the
U.S. by the end of the year and pledges 80% coverage by the end of 2008.
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