Pinpoint program points toward future of real estate information
BY OYAOL NGIRAIRIKL
Journal Staff
There is a new program that uses technology to provide real estate and property data, quickly and efficiently. Pinpoint aims to put land-related information at your fingertips to make it easier for anyone to make informed decisions and take necessary steps when making land transactions.
MummertRyan Mummert, president of Pinpoint, said the program offers a range of services designed to enhance access to real estate data, including documents like land records and property maps. Users can also see tax assessor data and zoning info.
Through his career he’s seen how much information is needed to make decisions related to titles and ownership of property and transactions related to properties. Mummert was a real estate agent in California. After moving to Guam, he was a realtor at Today’s Realty Guam before moving to Title Guaranty as general manager.
“Title insurance is one of the most paper heavy businesses in the world just because of a lot of record retention and a lot of data that you have to retain,” he said.
Title companies conduct thorough title searches to identify any issues with the property's title, such as liens, encumbrances, or ownership disputes. This process helps confirm that the seller has the legal right to sell the property. With the title search complete, title companies issue title insurance policies to protect buyers and lenders from potential future claims against the property. This insurance covers legal fees and losses arising from title defects.
Mummert said many title companies have moved to digitizing records for efficiency. Among them are Fidelity National Financial Inc., which acquired LandAmerica Financial Group in 2008, and Stewart Title Guaranty Co., which acquired several smaller companies over the years. The mergers allowed the companies to enhance digitized data management and streamline document retrieval processes, Mummert said.
No one was doing that in Guam, but Mummert could see its value.
“If we had one person doing it and everybody trusted that one person, then there will be a huge market efficiency (with) trained researchers. It would be ideal for a market like us to consolidate all our assets under one entity,” he said. “That was the impetus of me starting Pinpoint.”
As to the cost of such a venture, Mummert said the “upfront investment was significant because of the time and resources scanning and indexing the data took plus we had to lease heavy scanning equipment and have personnel to scan.
“Additionally, data quality and accuracy is paramount for us so we take extra steps to cross check and validate our data which adds to the expense and maintenance costs,” he said.
Just as they would do at any title company or other organization needing property information, Pinpoint’s team members go out and pull all public information, from taxes to sales. And then they take it to the next level.
The Pinpoint team at the Aug. 8 Assembly of Planners Symposium at the Hyatt Regency Guam were (from left) Courtney Aguon, business operations coordinator; Jonathan Bondoc, lead data engineer; and Adrienne Santos, data indexing and verification manager, of all Pinpoint.
“Essentially every day what happens at the Department of Land Management is documents are recorded, I purchase a copy of all the documents, and I index them,” he said. “And what we do is we make that data available to other parties who build applications … then we also build applications ourselves.”
Pinpoint is an example of how technology can be used to make the research less cumbersome.
Pinpoint's flagship service, REALFacts, allows users to quickly locate property information by entering legal descriptions into a parcel search, according to the website. It features high-resolution maps that enable users to select specific parcels or areas and retrieve detailed parcel information quickly and easily.
The platform ensures that users have access to the most current data. Users can view recorded mortgages, deeds, and other publicly accessible instruments at their convenience, with the option to order electronic copies.
By utilizing technology and data analytics, Pinpoint can help title companies streamline their operations, reducing the time required for searches and document retrieval. Companies, including title companies, real estate agents, appraisers and even law firms and financial institutions like banks, can leverage data-driven insights to enhance their ability to make informed decisions.
Mummert added that government agencies can also utilize Pinpoint.
“This has to be a public private partnership. I think the government has to get involved in what I’m doing in some way,” he added, saying it would only benefit them and the public.
“There just has to be a place to store all this data in a way that makes it easier for them and everyone to retrieve.”
He added that another thing the program aims to do is “cleansing,” which ensures that the data is clean and accurate, which is essential.
A screenshot of information you can search for and find on the Pinpoint website.
“Some of our documents are cursive, like the Agana volumes, they’re bound volumes in black and white and cursive, and nobody has those scanned, not even Land Management. Every time we do that, we make a copy and then have someone type if out. And now our models can search, and index and link these things.”
Pinpoint can even help the layperson unfamiliar with real estate processes. Anyone thinking of selling their property and needing to understand the value and legal status of their property will find the program useful, Mummert said.
For people looking to deed property to family members, having access to accurate and readily available information simplifies the process.
Bottom line, Pinpoint’s information and resources can help users avoid potential pitfalls that could lead to costly mistakes during the selling or deeding process, Mummert said.
He said any user can register and access Pinpoint’s public site and see limited information for free and documents can be viewed and purchased on a per document basis.
The company offers professional subscriptions for the trades: professional engineers, contractors, attorneys, banks, realtors, and governmental for our product RealFacts which is our land title and GiS information system. Subscriptions to that service range from $30 per month and up depending on the number of queries/searches, Mummert said.
They can also do enterprise licensing and build custom software applications that leverage GiS and real property data. All licensed Realtors have a subscription and full access to all the information in our database.
