INTRODUCING THE CLIENT

A leading provider of foreclosure and distressed property lists

Our client is a Texas-based company that specializes in providing comprehensive foreclosure and distressed property lists to individuals, businesses, and real estate investors. With a powerful online portal, the company offers quick and convenient access to unbeatable real estate deals by researching and providing access to residential and commercial foreclosure properties, government-owned homes, REOs, and distressed properties for a low subscription fee. Whether someone is looking to purchase a home or an investment property, their comprehensive database of properties allows customers to find the perfect property to meet their needs.

PROJECT CHALLENGES

Aggregating and standardizing data for foreclosure, bankruptcy, and auctions

To provide its clients with up-to-date and accurate lists, the client is required to consistently research and timely enter real estate investment data related to Foreclosure, Bankruptcy, Sheriff Sales, Auctions, etc., to its online portal. To seamlessly execute this process, the client needed a quick resolution to the following challenges:

Challenges that needed immediate attention:

Access to real estate public records : The client needed to provide their customers with a range of information packages and foreclosure data services that required access to real estate public records in real-time.
Complexity in obtaining public records : Obtaining public records is complicated due to the different industry procedures followed by various states, making accessing foreclosure data a time-consuming and challenging task for the client.
Difficulty in aggregating & standardizing data : Since diverse data was collected in relation to foreclosure, bankruptcy, auctions, etc., from diverse, multiple sources, the client faced difficulties in accurately sorting, aggregating, and standardizing the data in a timely manner.
Building a competent data acquisition team : To maintain a seamless flow of foreclosure data and maintain voluminous databases, the client wanted to build a competent data acquisition team, who had to be well-versed in mandatory industry procedures of acquiring data from different counties and segregating it on various parameters to meet the tailored needs.
Managing time & resource-intensive tasks : The client wanted to offload foreclosure data collection, database maintenance, and data entry services to a specialized vendor to achieve operational efficiency, save time, and focus on core business operations.

"We were looking for a team with excellent data research and management skills and a quick learning curve to scale up operations quickly and ensure timely and accurate delivery of foreclosure data to its customers. Having come across SunTec’s website, I thought this could be our go-to option. And fortunately, we found what we were looking for."

-Client

OUR APPROACH

Achieving data collection proficiency through intensive training sessions

After understanding the challenges, we suggested a 'dedicated' team model that would ensure seamless collaboration and communication of the client with the remote team. The team comprises data research experts, data scraping professionals, and foreclosure data experts who underwent rigorous training sessions on compliance and data collection techniques led by the client.

The training sessions were designed to ensure that the team members were well-versed in mandatory industry procedures for acquiring data from different counties, segregating it based on the provided parameters, and sorting, compiling, and standardizing the data in a timely manner. The training sessions were conducted over a period of one week, enabling the team to work independently.

OUR SOLUTION

Surpassing challenges with SunTec’s proven foreclosure data support services

Data collection and research

To access real estate public records, our research and data collection services providing professionals scrutinize publicly available data of county offices and other government agencies to collect the necessary data (including foreclosure, bankruptcy, sheriff sales, auctions data, etc.) for the client. Our data extraction experts use APIs and scripts to capture relevant data. At present, foreclosure data experts at SunTec are collecting and compiling property data from over 176 counties for the following purpose:

Commercial transactions : We sift through sources and collect relevant information consisting of sales and pricing information from January 1, 1990, to the present. This information is typically available within ten working days from the filing date. Additionally, we include the principals of each transaction and their contact information, if possible.
Foreclosure postings : These postings are available to all 20 days before a scheduled auction. We research and prepare a detailed report of both residential and commercial properties scheduled to be foreclosed in the upcoming auction. Our research allows clients to be as specific or as general as they want, from a county search down to a street intersection.
Ownership of real estate : We also provide tax roll records for each county, which consist of property data provided by the appraisal districts.

Real estate data entry

This is a critical part of our client's business process, as it involves accurately inputting data related to foreclosed properties, bankruptcies, sheriff sales, auctions, and more into their online portal. we allotted a dedicated team of data entry experts to diligently compile, segregate, and enter data in their respective databases for delivery to the client. We performed data entry for

Foreclosure Data (loan date, loan amount, name of grantor, name of mortgagee, etc.)
Deed of trust
Bankruptcy records (case number & type, debtor name, address, bankruptcy type, trustee name, property value, etc.)
Sheriff sales data (case number, defendant, assessed value, judgment date, amount, built year & area, etc.)
Auction listings (trustee names, borrower name, mortgagor name, loan amount, assessed value, etc.)
Delinquent tax
Divorce case listings
REO data (trustee names, borrower name, lender, address, opening bid, closing bid, etc.)

Data cleaning, standardization & validation

To ensure that the collected and entered data is accurate, our data cleansing experts check the final database to identify and fix errors pertaining to duplicate entries (since capturing data from multiple sources often leads to duplicate entries), data errors, incorrect values, spelling mistakes, and cases & formatting (using data standardization techniques).

Our team of experts meticulously reviews the data to ensure that there are no inconsistencies. We further perform data validation & verification to make sure that the entered data is correct and relevant to the client’s needs.

Safeguarding the client’s data: Our proactive data security approach

As a certified ISO company, we understand the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of the client’s data and hence have put in place stringent data security protocols.

Our network security policy features state-of-the-art firewalls, multi-layer IP address netting, and secure VPN access to ensure secure data transmission.
We use encrypted email and FTP to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.
All data operations are supervised to maintain the highest level of security.
We sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to protect our client's sensitive information.

How we made a difference?

Our team helped the client reduce the turnaround time for data entry by 3X, resulting in more efficient and timely delivery of foreclosure data to their customers through the online portal.

The client's data acquisition cost has been reduced by nearly 40% by hiring decided resources from SunTec India.

The client has successfully been able to offload its complete burden of data collection and entry for 176 counties and is able to better focus on its core operations.

Impressed by the results, the client signed us as their ongoing data collection, management, and entry partner.

Humans-in-the-loop approach

There is simply no substitute for human intuition and judgment when it comes to ensuring data quality and accuracy. And so, at SunTec Data, we combine the use of automated tools and human expertise to deliver excellent results. No matter how advanced software, tools, and automated techniques we use, we employ skilled professionals to check and validate data for quality and accuracy manually. Despite using advanced scraping techniques, our data operators focus on personally validating the relevance of the data collected and further delivering it to the client. This approach indeed sets us apart and helps us keep the promise to deliver unmatchable and accurate data management solutions.

Foreclosure data collection and entry for a Texas-based real estate company