The nation is experiencing an unprecedented credit crisis with profound effects on individuals, families and communities both economically and socially. The extensive damage to credit and real estate markets exacerbates the challenges posed by the foreclosure crisis. All the while, neighborhoods are devastated, cities are buffeted by rising vacancies and falling tax revenues, and individuals are forced to leave their homes and, in many instances, the cities and states where they have lived for generations. This strain on the housing markets and consequently municipal property tax revenues will have a similarly adverse ripple effect on community stability across public resources including the school systems.  While the remedial strategies offered thus far can provide limited relief through incentives and subsidies made available to impacted individuals and families, the complexity of the problem makes the easiest to execute solutions woefully inefficient and, consequently, ineffective.  Without an immediate and pragmatic solution, continued failure threatens to bring the credit markets to a state of further disequilibrium and erode hard won gains in America’s communities.

TOOL CHARACTERISTICS

• Social Compact’s Land Valuation Tool:
• Provides focus at both the community and household level
• Provides a timely, pro-active approach to the growing foreclosure problem
• Builds collaboration among government, philanthropic, private-sector, and not-for-profit community partners
• Is cost effective and scalable

DATA SOURCES

• Built on public and proprietary data:
• First American CoreLogic
• Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA)
• Social Compact DrillDown
• Select Municipal Data (as available)

THE TOOL

The Land Valuation tool serves as an information platform to stem the tide of foreclosures while linking local governments, community development organizations, and lenders in a collaborative initiative. The tool facilitates the appropriate direction of public and private capital through the lens of local foreclosure impact, providing real-time understanding of the housing landscape and ability to prioritize possible interventions that support coordinated and effective decision making locally.

The platform represents a scalable, national model. Built upon a foundation of proprietary First American CoreLogic real estate data, the platform integrates Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data and boasts the flexibility to integrate additional data such as municipal tax assessments, building permits, and sheriff sales. Thus the platform serves as a readily available, updateable, national-level baseline of data, enhanced by municipal level data, that allows users to upload their own information or investment portfolios to better understand them in the context of a more complete assessment of underlying conditions. In addition, the tool will offer a land valuation model, leveraging the neighborhood typology work of RW Ventures, LLC, to provide a forward looking perspective of the risks facing communities as the foreclosure crisis continues to unfold.

Social Compact’s Land Valuation tool provides the business intelligence necessary to assess housing trends and real estate market velocities in order to prioritize local government intervention and coordinate with private and philanthropic sector responses. Though developed in response to the ongoing foreclosure crisis, the tool is designed to monitor and evaluate real estate trends so that, as impacted cities turn the corner on the foreclosure challenge, the tool remains a relevant and valuable lens through which to assess other real estate programs and strategies (i.e. affordable and marketrate housing development, vacant property disposition, land banking, real estate tax-base, etc).

The Land Valuation tool is a vehicle for stakeholders with varied levels of capacity to engage the foreclosure crisis not only head-on but dynamically, bringing value up and down for users by leveraging the expertise of the users across sites. Social Compact’s role is not only to build out the platform by aggregating, standardizing, updating and loading data, but to deliver initial site assessments and scheduled updated reports, develop analytics to maintain innovation, facilitate the use of the platform, and build capacity as required.

By enhancing understanding of where to focus wholesale funds (i.e. HUD Housing Foreclosure Stabilization monies) and leveraging those resources in conjunction with potential integrated solutions (whether through additional, proprietary functionalities or connecting users to recommended programs), the proposed tool will allow a varied network of users to mitigate against the potential community setbacks from foreclosure. The Land Valuation tool is designed to increase momentum, scale, and sustainability of change around the threat posed by the foreclosure crisis so that the opportunity to live in a vibrant, healthy community remains viable for all Americans.