Residential Briefs

MBA (5/27/2008 ) Palaparty, Vijay
FIS Releases Upgraded rDesk Suite
Fidelity National Financial Inc., Jacksonville, Fla., a provider of products, services and technology to the financial and real estate industries, announced that Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions released an upgrade to its rDesk Suite of agent and broker products. New features enable agents to offer consumers access to automated valuation modeling via their own branded web sites and an rDesk CMA comparative marketing analysis function, featuring graphic designs on all printed documents.

rDesk powered web sites provide consumers with access to neighborhood information, demographics, school reports, cost of living statistics, housing information, environmental information as well as comparable sales and property valuation of neighboring properties within the property detail page of every listing. Map-based searching is also available through these rDesk-powered sites.
JVI Appraisal Division Partners with Visre
Appraisal imagery provider Visre Inc., Jacksonville, Fla., formed a multi-year partnership with JVI Appraisal Division LLC, Lake Mary, Fla., a provider of REO valuations, portfolio evaluations and origination appraisal services. JVI will introduce image-enabled valuation products using Visre’s ability to capture and authenticate property photos and video.

A Visre vehicle mounted DriveBy camera system includes eight cameras, a GPS device, high capacity drives, a laptop PC and broadband mobile connections. Each of the eights cameras captures 12 high-resolution images per second while the GPS device simultaneous records location. The system links each photo to the GPS coordinates as well as the time and date of capture. With this information, Visre delivers those photos or videos to its partners and customers.

Visre can authenticate the images by linking the images to the location, time and date of capture. Image enabled features include address authenticated photos to supplement valuation reports and 360° DriveBy videos that provide a broader review and comparisons with neighboring properties on the street.

Zaio Announces Go Live 2008
Zaio Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz., announced Go Live 2008, a program developed to bring Zaio’s Zones to live status, seeking to create efficiency and generate more revenue and volume for local Zone owners. A Zone is a geographical location in the United States where Zaio licenses its technology to local appraisers. Once this Zone is acquired, the appraiser has an exclusive right to that area. Each Zone typically contains about 10,000 properties.

Connor & Connor Integrates with Simplifile
Simplifile LLC, Provo, Utah, and Connor & Connor Inc., Exeter, N.H., formed an alliance to integrate and cooperatively market Simplifile’s eRecording and Connor & Connor’s County Registry Indexing Systems.

The alliance requires both companies to integrate their respective eRecording and document indexing systems, allowing documents electronically filed by Simplifile submitter customers such as law offices, title companies and banks to be received, reviewed, recorded and returned to those same submitters by counties using Connor & Connor’s Indexing System. The accord also provides for Simplifile and Connor & Connor to cooperatively market the alliance and resulting services to their mutual customers, including Simplifile submitters and Connor & Connor-enabled registries in New Hampshire.

Optimal Blue Selected by Home Federal Savings Bank
Home Federal Savings Bank, Rochester, Minn., a subsidiary of HMN Financial Inc., implemented a product eligibility and pricing engine technology from Optimal Blue, Plano Texas, developer of a web-based platform that couples decisioning technology with content management for the mortgage industry.

Interthinx Offers More Analytics in FraudGuard
Interthinx Inc., Agoura Hills, Calif., a provider of risk mitigation, mortgage fraud prevention and regulatory compliance tools for the mortgage industry, released a new module through FraudGUARD to identify and manage potential occupancy and ownership misrepresentations in loan files.

The module includes analysis of a borrower’s history of property ownership and new alerts within FraudGUARD scoring system. Interthinx customers can detect undisclosed properties that can skew debt-to-income ratios and discover investors who falsely claim owner occupancy status in loan applications. Detection of such misrepresentations gives lenders an opportunity to investigate and avoid mispricing loan products before a loan is funded. The new occupancy and ownership module of FraudGUARD analyzes borrower ownership data from deed and assessment records and helps lenders assess a borrower’s ownership history with interactive timelines.

Calyx Software Introduces Software Development Kit
Calyx Software, Dallas, a provider of loan origination and processing software, announced the availability of its new Point Software Development Kit. The product facilitates integration with a client’s internal applications or with third party vendors seeking compatibility with Calyx Point loan origination software.

Point SDK serves as a two-way interface, providing the ability to read information from or write information into Point. It enables a company to develop applications that can access Point loan data from local folders or from Point Data Server, the company’s central system for managing distributed data between offices.