View our webinar on how to make your CRE data actionable by leveraging RealINSIGHT. Dan Linder, Sr. VP, and Jordan Gregory, VP of Data Services, share case studies and proven strategies to transform your business through actionable data.
How to make your Commercial Real Estate data actionable with RealINSIGHT
Thank you all for joining us for the RealINSIGHT webinar on making your CRE data actionable. Today we will be discussing data centralization, including the different API data feeds, and integration tools we use to bring your data into the RealINSIGHT system. Most importantly, we will discuss how we make your data actionable through custom reports, dashboards, and analytics. RealINSIGHT is a web-based, cloud-based life of loan solution, spanning origination, underwriting, asset management, and special servicing.
How do different firms use RealINSIGHT?
In this webinar, we are going to show you how data visualization works using many examples. We will show you how these firms make their data actionable by using RealINSIGHT.
The first step to making your data actionable is to get that data (internal and external) in one place and make it accurate and up to date. We know that doesn’t sound simple and can be a very painful process. To allay your fears, I would like to outline the process and then I have brought on Jordan Gregory, our Head of Data to describe how this process at RealINSIGHT works.
Is RealINSIGHT a good software for CRE loan originations?
I want to highlight what makes RealINSIGHT a platform that can really be helpful from a commercial real estate loan origination perspective. RealINSIGHT allows you to configure the loan origination system to manage the products that you sell, with the funding sources that you’re involved. We also help you evaluate every deal against the exact requirements of investors or clients. You can screen each deal against the borrower collateral and provide the best possible service to your customer.
How do you identify all the CRE data and get it into the software?
Firstly, we identify all your commercial real estate data, internal and external. We run this data through several different routines and processes that we’ve perfected. Once uploaded, you can view your information on maps, dashboards, and very complicated or custom models. Additionally, RealINSIGHT can generate instant reports that allow you to run various alerts. RealINSIGHT takes a time-intensive process and provides results instantly.
How does the data centralization process work?
Essentially, RealINSIGHT streamlines what can take weeks, months, and years to perfect and provides an instant solution. RealINSIGHT works with large clients and then of course, our parent company, CWCapital, uses RealINSIGHT very heavily. Working with these large firms has allowed us to perfect the data centralization process.
Drawing on our experience, we have created solutions and best practices to identify and mitigate issues. For example, one of our clients is a private equity firm, which is a very active bridge lender. This CRE company works with three servicers and each one of those servicers has a different servicing technology. Additionally, a lot of their information was in Excel. They had custom reports with various processes from borrowers.
Our dynamic process, that we really tailor to each commercial real estate client, is to build out the puzzle. We take apart the current process and put it together with best practices and solutions that we have refined over the years.
Identifying CRE data sources
Firstly, we identify all the commercial real estate data sources, internally and externally. Maybe they have a third-party servicer that’s hosting their data, we will proactively reach out and identify the data source or sources, whether it be database files that they host for them, whatever those may be, and we start working together with that third party service. We would also work with the client directly, to do the same identification process where we identify what data in-house. Additionally, the client may have Excel files that contain data. We identify all the data sources and then we work out the strategy.
How we develop a comprehensive CRE data strategy
Once the data sources have been identified, we develop a strategy to obtain all the commercial real estate data via a server. This could include setting up tasks, jobs, and/or daily data feeds so that the data is flowing in daily. These ETL or Extract Transfer Load jobs are custom-tailored to each client. The ETL pulls all that data into a database and from there, we have direct access to work with all these data feeds together into a staging database. This staging database will then map the fields into RealINSIGHT. Using this process allows us to “translate the data” and ensure the correct data is fed into RealINSIGHT. We give our clients full control of the data mapping process.
There are multiple ways to get data into our system, but I wanted to highlight those dealing with loans that are not public. Often, there is not a database to go grab that data. In these cases, we would load certain portions of data from various servicers, and we can tie it all into RealINSIGHT and make it look seamless.
Another benefit of the RealINSIGHT process is that we can create custom mapping integrators. For example, if a client has a non-standard custom excel sheet that they would like to upload we can build a process that allows the client to continue using that Excel and tie those fields from their sheet into RealINSIGHT. Essentially, they could continue to use their existing Excel sheet and upload that through our integrator product. And once the integrator has been set up in a one-time process for that sheet, those fields will continue to map each time they upload it right into the fields every time.
Public Real Estate Data
We have also worked with public commercial real estate information and have direct experience integrating that into RealINSIGHT. We have built a proprietary process for sourcing public data. Our process also includes the ability to aggregate that data, if needed. This allows us to be flexible from the first initial load to ongoing monthly updates. It’s not just CMBS or agency data, we also can grab sale and lease comp data. Multiple data sources are standard in this industry, and we can import data from as many data sources as the client needs.
Visualizing aggregated data in RealINSIGHT.
One good example of how to make your data actionable is our mapping tool. All properties entered into RealINSIGHT are geocoded, so that if you want to understand your exposure in a specific market you could add in the sales comp data. At this level, it is very easy to see nearby properties that have sold, and you can use this for analysis.
Managing By Exception
When your data is all in one platform it becomes easy to manage by exception. For example, if you have over 1,000 loans you can set different compliance alerts based on updates if a borrower status changes, if a workflow gets prompted or if something gets transferred to special servicing. As a client, you will have the visibility to always know what is going on. These alerts can email you and are visible in RealINSIGHT so that nothing gets held up and management can drill down to see the process and any roadblocks and who is responsible for them.