Inman

Re/Max partners with RealtyTrac to surface neighborhood characteristics

Connected image via Shutterstock.

Foreclosure data from RealtyTrac is now integrated into property searches on remax.com, and neighborhood and housing data from RealtyTrac’s proprietary Homefacts database is coming soon under a new agreement between franchise giant Re/Max and the growing Irvine, California-based data aggregator.

The agreement allows remax.com and affiliated Re/Max websites to put information about schools, crime statistics, demographics and environmental data around for-sale listings. RealtyTrac foreclosure data has been integrated into property searches on remax.com, with access to details on 1.1 million homes in default, scheduled for auction or bank-owned (REO) limited to RealtyTrac subscribers.

“In the ever-changing real estate market, we’re constantly enhancing our Web experience to provide consumers with helpful data for making informed decisions, and our agents with competitive advantages,” said Re/Max’s Tim Drouillard, vice president, information technology, in a statement.

Known for its comprehensive database on foreclosure filings, RealtyTrac has expanded its business in recent years. The company became a provider of “hyperlocal” neighborhood information like crime statistics and registered sex offender data, school ratings and environmental hazards in 2012, by acquiring Homefacts. Homefacts’ founder and CEO, James Moyle, joined RealtyTrac as president and chief operating officer.

This year, RealtyTrac got into the tax, deed and mortgage data licensing business through a CoreLogic settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that required CoreLogic to license that data to RealtyTrac. The company offers a nationwide property-level data set of tax, deed and mortgage records for 125 million parcels nationwide.

RealtyTrac also licenses data to eight members of a brokerage network launched in February 2013. Member firms pay to license RealtyTrac’s data and to be the exclusive recipient of RealtyTrac leads in their market. Some of those brokers publish Internet Data Exchange (IDX) listing feeds on RealtyTrac.com.

After briefly surfacing info like drug lab and sex offender neighborhood stats next to listings on RealtyTrac.com in March, RealtyTrac pulled that and other information from listing detail pages sourced from multiple listing services to comply with MLS rules.