REALTYDATA SHOOTING FOR NATIONAL MARKET
November 7, 2001
Newsday
By Jamie Herzlich

Armed with a fresh infusion of capital and a new alliance with a large Texas-based technology company, RealtyData Corp. of Mineola now has its eye on a national expansion.

RealtyData, an online provider of New York City real estate information for the real estate, title, insurance and financial services sector, has just inked a five-year revenue-sharing agreement with ACS of Dallas that could allow it to access real estate data from as many as 500 counties in 30 states.

The company also has received more than $2 million from the principals of one of its clients, National Real Estate Information Services in Pittsburgh, to help with operations, as well as its national expansion.

"We view this as a good vehicle for the future of the industry," said Mike Forgas, managing director of National Real Estate Information Services, who recently made the investment in RealtyData along with National's president, Richard Hvizdak.

The online data base greatly speeds up the information-gathering process for real estate closings, enabling title insurance companies and appraisers to do in minutes what used to take three to seven business days, company officials said.

RealtyData said it is talking to Nassau and Suffolk counties as well as Westchester about providing their records online, but it said it will first concentrate on this new ACS agreement.

There are a few companies, including Public Data Corp. in Manhattan, that provide similar online real estate information for the city but not Long Island. RealtyData was founded by Robert Redmond, who heads up Realty Reports Inc., a title insurance and real estate appraisal company in Mineola. Redmond wanted a way to automate a timely manual document-gathering process that involves several steps, including visits to the county clerk's office and the courthouse, and he founded RealtyData in 1997. It wasn't until late last year, however, that the service was officially launched. Until last week, the group of about 11 now headed up by chief executive David Drucker moved out of Realty Reports office space into their own larger space in Mineola.

RealtyData now has a database of about 200 million records for the four city boroughs, excluding Staten Island. It contains property information such as deed and mortgage records, tax history, judgments, liens, bankruptcies and parking violations. Subscribers pay a fee ranging from $3 to $70 to initiate a request through RealtyData.com and need only input a name or address to access the history of the property online.

That is not the case yet for access to records outside the boroughs. The company can get mortgage and deed documents for a customer in some states, but the user would have to still go to the county clerk's office or courthouse to obtain other specifics.

"We want to replicate what we've done in the boroughs, nationwide," Drucker said. "ACS has a relationship with several hundred counties." The counties would have to agree to release their data for use by the Mineola firm; Drucker hopes to have 70 more counties in his database by late next year.

"We just signed the agreement, and we're talking to several counties," said Jim Dufner, senior vice president and managing director for ACS' government records management division.

Nassau and Suffolk county officials were unavailable for comment yesterday, with offices closed for Election Day.

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