Delivering the Best in Information & Inventory
RealtyTrac is Ready to Optimize Established Strengths & New Ones by Carole VanSickle Ellis RealtyTrac, one of the oldest and most established names in the web-based real estate space, is putting “the pedal to the metal,” as parent company ATTOM Data Solutions’ CEO Rob Barber puts it—and, as is typical for the company, the timing is perfect. “When we first started thinking about a re-launch of the RealtyTrac.com platform, we were aiming for springtime in 2021. When COVID-19 emerged on the scene, that goal became more imperative because of the many forbearance programs that are likely, based on current policies, to expire in the fall of this year,” explained Barber, who was integrally involved in hiring entrepreneurial real estate veteran Ohan Antebian to help lead the buildout of the new product. Antebian is general manager of ATTOM’s RealtyTrac segment. Antebian is, in his own words, “data-minded,” and within the real estate data industry he is known for fiercely championing the concept of data transparency long before others in the sector were particularly concerned with the idea. Antebian began his career at Realtor.com. “Back in the early 2000s, the idea of data transparency in real estate meant publishing [information about] for-sale homes online,” Antebian explained. “I also believed it was so important to make expansive content available on properties so that an investor could get a comprehensive insight on the asset—to the point where one company I worked with hired professional writers from the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to help build out the context around the homes published on the site.” That venture ended with the 2009 sale of that business to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) where it was reborn as a REALTOR® access-only productivity tool. RPR (the reborn name of the project) was the ideal preparation for Antebian’s role with RealtyTrac. “Imagine viewing a single graph that elegantly summarizes all events on a property, such as deed transfer, notice of default, sale, etc., to enable the user to assess the property.” he said. “The effort behind that elegant, simplified presentation is monumental. At RealtyTrac, our ambition is to take on those monumental efforts for the benefit of the individual investor. These data-driven yet simplified insights are needed to make obvious and objective decisions.” Antebian, himself a veteran in real estate, joined RealtyTrac in October 2019. He was already an ATTOM customer and had a clear vision of how RealtyTrac.com should serve existing investors and new ones. “RealtyTrac has a core loyal following of longstanding customers,” he said. “We closely examined this distilled population of users to uncover the value they are deriving from using the website.” The value, Antebian and his team realized, was the comprehensiveness of the data. The discovery served as a blueprint in the architecture of the new platform. “RealtyTrac has a population of long-term ‘power users’ who have been with the company for years and years,” Barber added. “The new product delivers and builds on the promises of the old product but with a modernized tech stack and user interface.” A Roadmap Based on Real Needs of Active Investors The appeal of RealtyTrac for real estate investors has always hinged on the company’s access to large amounts of timely, relevant data and the platform’s ability to aggregate that data in meaningful ways. When the RealtyTrac team set out to invest in “modernizing” the website that became familiar to many in 2007 as the housing crash and subsequent global financial meltdown rocked United States homeowners and real estate investors, it was imperative to sustain the legacy and integrity of the data that the company had built over the previoustwo decades. “We knew how important it would be for investors to be able to search for certain types of properties in clearly delineated areas and to find as much information as possible about specific addresses,” Barber said. “Then, we homed in on how to provide and present a comprehensive view of a property and the surrounding community to our subscribers.” This aggregation and compilation of data is “Phase I” of RealtyTrac’s ongoing relaunch, which Barber refers to as the “search-and-discovery phase”. The next phase (Phase II) will expand the value of that information using Antebian’s concept of elegant transparency, tying in analysis and decision-making features designed to help individual investors make highly customized decisions based on the latest information available about a property. Naturally, this will involve software development and the assembly of a toolbox on a scale to match the company’s existing scale of real estate data. “We want to deliver a data analytics roadmap to our customers that includes all the information RealtyTrac can access about a given address that is not in the public domain,” Barber said. “Our goal is to always help our customers make better-informed real estate decisions.” That toolbox will include automated valuation models, a variety of lending and leverage models, and even theoretical equity models that will enable investors to compare and contrast potential strategies for different properties in the same area. “We have access to so much information,” Antebian said proudly. “It is really exciting to see how this data can be made available to empower the individual investor. That is where we want to continue to succeed and continue to double down.” Eventually, the company roadmap will not only include access to data and the most modern analytical tools in the industry but also the ability to complete transactions on the RealtyTrac platform. “Phase III brings all the parties who already use and benefit from RealtyTrac together, allowing buyers and sellers to initiate and then complete the sale of a home,” Barber said proudly. Empowering Investors Through Expansion of Inventory & Insight When Barber and Antebian talk about empowering investors, their vision is clear and the goals tangible: A larger volume of available inventory A higher-quality and higher volume of time-sensitive data The information, insight, and tools necessary for investors to leverage the advantages that come with the first two points. Empowering the
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