Independent Settlement Services, a national provider of appraisal and title management services, announced it will offer a new valuation product to lenders through a partnership with HouseCanary, a leading provider of innovative real estate data and valuation products for the mortgage industry, the companies announced in a release.
Independent will add Value Report to its comprehensive menu of national appraisal and real estate valuation products. The Value Report is an instantaneous automated valuation model (AVM) to determine single-family home and condo values.
The increased use and acceptance of AVMs has created demand for higher quality, more accurate residential property valuations. Home equity lenders are utilizing AVMs for property valuation, when possible, to minimize cost of origination and to decrease loan closing time, according to the release.
The Value Report provides instant property valuation, market risk assessment and real estate market data for a single property or entire portfolios, leveraging HouseCanary’s proprietary algorithms that draw on more than 1 billion U.S. historical home transactions.
“HouseCanary is delivering a much more informative and transparent automated property valuation to the real estate lending industry,” Independent Settlement Services Director of Sales and Senior Vice President Christopher Seymour said in the release. “The Value Report provides lenders with supporting comparable sales data and other drivers of home value to make better, more confident real estate decisions.”
The release also states that the Value Report produces comprehensive property details, including sales history and a suitability score to measure valuation confidence. Lenders gain an understanding of the local market with the report’s three-year value forecast for the subject property’s market. The Value Report also ranks the subject property against its 10 closest, algorithmically selected comparables, providing lenders the comfort of knowing their valuation is validated against the market context.
“Working with Independent, HouseCanary is excited to offer valuation models with unprecedented accuracy and coverage, which is what ultimately appeals to lenders,” HouseCanary Chief Marketing Officer Martin Morzynski said. “Our algorithms analyze over 1 billion residential transactions over the last 40 years against macroeconomic drivers of demand, incorporating schools, crime and other current drivers at the block level to achieve this level of accuracy. The result is a modern AVM that helps lenders originate and close loans with confidence.”