Insurance product protects homebuyers from a decline in market value

SACRAMENTO, Calif.: MetroList, Northern California’s largest multiple listing service, has partnered with StreetWire, a real estate data and products developer, to launch an innovative insurance product, Home Value Lock.

Home Value Lock protects homebuyers by insuring up to 10% of their home’s market value for the first three years after purchase. For those who need to move house sooner than expected, Home Value Lock ensures that their investment is protected against a market drop. The product, which is fully licensed and regulated in the state of California, is a revolutionary product and the first of its kind to hit the marketplace. It is now available on primary residence, single-family homes in the Sacramento area.

“Home Value Lock is an important step toward much-needed innovation in the real estate sector after the wave of funding and regulatory changes that have followed the recent NAR litigation,” said MetroList CEO Dave Howe. “We believe that MLS data is consistently underutilized in the financial services sector, and the launch of Home Value Lock will prove its tremendous value proposition.”

Howe said that the collaboration between MetroList and StreetWire also solves a broader licensing issue that has plagued MLS providers: that real estate agents and financial services use the same data but derive different value from it. The licensing cost therefore needs to reflect this.

“We hope that this division in pricing will allow MLSs to continue to maintain their core function of serving their membership while diversifying their revenue stream and confirming the real estate broker’s value at the very heart of the U.S. home buying process,” Howe added.

StreetWire CEO Oliver Tickner said the company already has plans to work with more MLS providers as the firm expands nationwide. “As a data modeling network, we have an acute understanding of the power and value of MLS data to better identify housing market patterns,” said Tickner. “Our goal is to re-benchmark the value of that dataset for financial services.”

“With the creation of Home Value Lock, StreetWire and MetroList have demonstrated how to practically leverage the accuracy and timeliness of MLS real estate transaction data. As actuarial teams and insurers, we use this to solve some of the problems and questions that we have about the sector,” said Matthew Maxwell, Chief Underwriting Officer of OMT Insurance Services, producer of the Home Value Lock product. “We don’t mind paying a premium for those services if it allows us to understand and price risk better for existing markets, as well as develop new products for consumers.”

MetroList Services, Inc.

MetroList Services Inc. is the official Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and technology provider to more than 22,500 real estate brokers and agents in Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Merced, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba Counties. MetroList acts as a seamless real estate information network and has been in operation for more than 35 years, is the largest MLS in Northern California and serves a geographic market area covering over 10,000 square miles. MetroList operates ten regional administrative centers that provide a full range of value-added tools, resources, and services to help real estate professionals in their businesses.

About StreetWire

StreetWire is the product of more than four years of research into real estate technology and markets. Today, the StreetWire network helps power the analysis and risk management of billions of dollars of real estate financial services products. The company is based in New York City. For further information, visit www.streetwire.net

Fonte: Business Wire