Client Profile.
The client is a real estate information services firm based in the USA and established in 1872, helping its customers identify new business opportunities with insights related to mortgage data, property analytics, and industry trends.
Business Need.
The client maintained parcel-mapped data compatible with GIS-ready information and other metadata captured from county and the USPS websites for each property. They were looking to standardize all relevant parcel information available in large volumes to update their website, property analytics etc.
Thus, the firm was looking for a partner with knowledge of the US property parcel, county geographies and property taxation in various counties to:
- Standardize of property address with owner name and address.
- Append situs and owner zip codes.
- Demarcate property area for boundary mapping.
- Review of primary situs address.
- Run and resolve resident owners.
- Verify APN (Assessor’s Parcel Number).
- Verify address with property’s legal documents.
Challenges.
The team faced project’s challenges such as:
- Availability of latest, accurate, and verified information.
- Constant fluctuation in volumes of property data.
- Domain knowledge for the US property documents.
- Unstructured datasets with inconsistencies in records.
Solution.
- HitechDigital team received the database for property information from client which was verified and validated to meet the needs of parcel mapping.
- Any set of missing information related to parcel was collected from legal documents and county websites.
- Each record address with zip codes, details of owners, APN etc. was verified against the information on the websites of respective counties and the US Postal Systems.
- Excel based macro tools were created to automate the QC and standardization of record values.
- Upon approval from client, the updated data was populated into the client’s systems to deliver:
- Accurate information about the property
- Insights were made available on property parcel
Approach.
- The client shared all information related to property, concerned county websites and the credentials to access their portal.
- Addresses, details of lenders/borrowers etc. were verified and duplicate entries were removed.
- Details such as zip codes, situs zip codes etc., were researched manually through the USPS websites and appended in the record.
- Information such as property owners’ names and address were obtained from county’s websites using credentials shared by the client.
- Excel based Macros and VBA tools were created to index the file for checking standardization of entries and rectifying any discrepancies
- For example: A standard way of writing the zip codes or spelling for a particular county area, structure of the data entered etc. was to be followed.
- Tools would check these pre-defined or standard formats for each entry for large volumes.
- Deviation from the standard format was reported by the tool and sent to the team for correction.
- Any entries that could not be checked by the tool was verified manually and updated in the database.
- Once the tool-based QC of the property records was done, a senior QC person would manually verify entries on random basis. This ensured the accuracy of property information records.
- Final indexed files were prepared for all counties, saved to a specified path and appended to the client’s database.
