Systems and methods for searching, prioritizing between, and producing a conglomerating of real estate descriptions in a common format

Abstract

Disclosed herein are: systems capable of searching, receiving and conglomerating the data from real estate databases of varying formats, and translating that received into a common format; execution of pre-defined translation rules referencing data tags used within the system or the originating databases; rules constructed in a simple, hierarchical or a class-based structure whereby one rule depends upon the output of another rule for its input; data sources prioritized or merged where the same property-related information is presented in more than one source; map definitions containing rule sets crafted for a particular use, such as for a particular consumer or user; such systems used in the course of real estate appraisals, in property search reports, extending across databases of differing formats. Detailed information on various example embodiments of the inventions are provided in the Detailed Description below, and the inventions are defined by the appended claims.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of each of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 410,848, filed Nov. 5, 2010, U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 439,835, filed Feb. 5, 2011, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 463,356, filed Feb. 16, 2011, each of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND[0002]The appraisal industry originated from a need to valuate real property, such as surrounding the sale or insurance of a home, building or other improvement to land. The traditional process, as shown in FIG. 1, involved an individual called an appraiser 14, whose assignment it was to attribute a value to a piece of property, while possibly verifying the characteristics of that property in the process. To perform this function the appraiser 14 would receive a description of property 12, minimally identifying the property to appraise the value of, but preferably also describing the attributes of the property such as the type, ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The patent describes a system that can search, receive, and combine data from different databases containing real estate information. The system uses rules to translate the data into a common format, which can be useful for comparing and distributing property descriptions in appraisal. The system can also prioritize or merge data sources that describe properties in different ways. The system can create map definitions with specific rules for different users or operators. Overall, the system allows for more efficient and uniform appraisal of real estate properties by using data from various sources and applying consistent rules."

Problems solved by technology

In can be appreciated that the appraisers of yesterday spent a significant amount of time in the land records office finding comparables, which was inconvenient.

Unfortunately, the history of these public records varies from locality to locality, such that there is no unified repository that can be consulted.

Although these do provide information useful in the performance of appraisals, these are restricted in their locality both geographically and by organization, as it is local boards of realtors that ordinarily own or otherwise participate in correspondingly local or at most regional MLSs.

While most of these system have export capabilities, these have their limitations in extractions, formats and presentations to appraisers, who ordinarily find that much of the information received requires further manual processing.

Some appraisers have attempted to organize their own services in a local or regional co-op, but these have not solved the problems with non-standardizations of data formats.

The data in an appraisers file may or may not have been manipulated to meet personal style or structure, and cannot be relied upon without familiarity of this source by the appraiser desiring use of it.

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