Tidying up real estate data

Enabling online mortgages and building insurance

WiRE is laying the digital foundations for companies in the banking and financial sectors to develop and deliver products and services tailored to specific properties, individuals, and households.

We are building the complete profile of a property, from the type of soil the building has been constructed upon, to its size, materials used, etc. We then link this profile with market price and risk data, and enrich it further by using publicly available information and satellite imagery. One could say that what we do is tidy up what is already out there. As my mother says, when you are looking for an answer tidying up is usually what you need to find it.

Imagine a world where the basic characteristics of all properties is available. What does that mean for banks and insurance companies? The development of tailored products and services for each property and the ability to transact for these online. Let’s work through an example.

If we know what the property is and we have collected pricing data for it, then we can develop an automated valuation model to provide a benchmark value for someone to decide whether to buy it.

The bank can also use that value, along with risk indicators about that specific submarket, e.g. the level of supply, how liquid that property is, etc to determine the loan to value and other parameters under which it would lend the buyer for that property.

If you combine these with the prospective buyer’s credit characteristics, which are accessible through open banking, then you can have a tailored loan offering, essentially an online mortgage, available at the click of a button.

If you also have the environmental risks that affect or could affect that property, e.g. flood risk, earthquake risk, etc, then you can provide an insurance company with the reinstatement value and the risk variables, allowing it to provide a tailored insurance quote, again at the click of a button.

Far-fetched? Impossible? Reality. We are building it already.

WiRE is now entering a new phase in its development. We have passed the “is it possible” phase and are now in the “let’s roll it out and generate leads for our clients”. When we reach the point where we have mapped all properties across Europe, made it accessible to everyone to have full visibility of what they are transacting in and have enabled online mortgages and building insurance, this will be the end of our journey.

For now, we are going back to tidying up.