Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, “I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.”
The title industry, like its lending and real estate counterparts, is moving toward a more digital customer experience. Getting there is no small feat. It requires a detailed examination of every step in the title and closing process to determine how to best transition existing operations to digital processes. The creation of a faster, more efficient and lower-cost process for sourcing tax information is key to this effort.
Accurate reporting of current property taxes is critical to supporting successful closings. It helps determine if there are any tax liens that may jeopardize the transaction and identifies the appropriate taxes to be paid at closing.
At many title firms, the process of collecting, inputting and reviewing this complex information is highly manual and resource intensive. First, staffers must identify all the applicable tax agencies for the subject property (from over 3,100 counties with thousands of cities, towns and school districts that may collect taxes separately from the county) and then search the agencies’ websites and/or contact the agencies directly. Some title companies use tax vendors to source this information, but not without limitations. Most of these vendors have regional, rather than national, coverage and their data formatting is not integrated with leading title production systems.
Additionally, when tax data is accumulated from numerous sources, it usually must be manually rekeyed multiple times, creating opportunities for costly data errors.
A More Digital, Efficient Process
DataTrace® developed TaxSource™ to simplify and standardize the tax information process. DataTrace TaxSource is a centralized, on-demand tax reporting platform that produces accurate, consistent tax status reporting by directly accessing nationwide tax information, including:
- Current-year bill details
- Assessed values with exemptions
- Tax agency requirements
- Prior-year delinquency records with payoff amounts
DataTrace TaxSource data is validated by a network of experienced regional tax specialists for data currency and data integrity. The same network of tax specialists is also available to support TaxSource users.
TaxSource data is delivered in a consistent, standardized format across all jurisdictions, so there is no need to source and review numerous tax bill formats.
Delivery Made Easy
TaxSource seamlessly integrates with commercial and proprietary title production systems through robust application programming interface (API) integrations. This reduces the need to rekey information, helping to save time, prevent data errors, and accelerate title closings. Centralized access to orders, including batch and large orders, is available through a convenient user interface.
The DataTrace Tax Source solution is available through:
- DT-API: Customizable real estate data delivered how and when you need it, and an API that provides JavaScript Object Notation results for easier integration with your production system.
- DataTrace System (DTS): Fast and efficient search completions, with fully integrated document retrieval and an advanced title search platform.
- TitleFlex™: Real estate research, property profile generation and customer service in a single tool.
- Advanced Data Solutions (ADS): Streamlined process to batch order TaxSource requests, returned as a delimited text file, and easily imported based on data needs.
As the real estate and mortgage finance industries become increasingly digital, the title industry can help lead the way. Moving from manual to digital tax sourcing will carve time, cost and errors from the title process, helping to improve operational efficiency and enhance the closing experience.