Blogs

April 17, 2018

What is the purpose of Hazard HQ and who is it designed for?

Hazard HQ’s purpose is to arm our core audience of insurers, mortgage professionals, and media with information that allows them to make educated decisions that help people most effectively protect their homes, businesses, and families. Here at Hazard HQ™ you’ll find press releases, explanations ...

March 9, 2018

Selecting the Right Valuation Solution for Your Loan Portfolio

Regular valuations are an extremely important and healthy practice in mortgage portfolio monitoring from both a business and regulatory standpoint. With home prices on an upward trend for nearly the past decade, it is easy to overlook the importance of regular portfolio monitoring. In this cyclic...

February 28, 2018

Special Report: Evaluating the Housing Market Since the Great Reces...

The special report reviews the evolution of the U.S. housing market, from the April 2006 bubble, to the March 2011 market-bottom, to the October 2017 peak (post-Great Recession). It analyzes the current housing market, on a national, state and city level since the recession. It takes into conside...

December 15, 2017

Home Price Winners and Losers

A Deeper Look at the CoreLogic HPI Shows Some Losers Can Be Big Winners Since the U.S. began recovering from the home-price bust in 2006, economists have used the peak-to-current change in prices as a measure of recovery in markets. However, the peak-to-current change hyper-focuses on economic lo...

December 1, 2017

How Much Is Your Home’s Collateral Value?

Traditional Appraisal and Automated Valuation Models Don’t Always See Eye to Eye Recently the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced plans to waive the requirement of a professional appraisal on qualified purchase loans with a loan-to-value ratio at or be...

November 22, 2017

Millennial Homebuyers Are Not All the Same

Older Millennials Closer to Generation Xers than to Younger Millennials Millennials, born from 1981 to 1997, accounted for 40 percent of homebuyer loan applications during January to September of this year.[1] However, there are notable differences between the younger millennial homebuyers (...

October 9, 2017

Will Putting “Won’t Last” in a Housing Listing Comment Help It Sell?

The Answer is Yes, But There is More to It About a year ago, I published a blog on the impact that listing comments have on days on market: Public Listing Comments Can Have an Impact on Days on Markets. I soon realized there was confusion about the analysis, as I received inquiries asking wh...

September 7, 2017

Making the Adjustment

The Modern Age of Desk Adjusting for the Insurance Industry Deploying adjusters to the field is a large overhead cost for insurance companies. Incoming claims vary in terms of size and severity, and with that, not every claim requires an on-site adjustment. Thus, in addition to field adjusters, i...

May 23, 2017

The Evolving Role of Content Providers in the Property Ecosystem

Managing Enterprise through the Rapid Change Companies in the property ecosystem—lenders, insurers, property management companies and others—use data and information from content providers to drive improved consumer experience through automated workflows, streamline processing and expedited risk ...

March 3, 2017

Earthquake Risk: Spotlight on Probabilistic Loss Modeling

Loss Estimation Requires More than Hazard Science Catastrophic risk models and analytics are commonly used by the insurance, reinsurance, financial and mortgage industries to help understand and quantify risk exposed to natural catastrophes including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and...

February 10, 2017

“I must be covered; I have Homeowners Insurance!”

What you don’t know about your policy can hurt you…financially It’s often been said, “it’s better to have insurance and not need it than to need it and not have it” as a homeowner I do have insurance so I must be covered…. right….well there is more to the story. Understanding what is ...

November 10, 2016

Effective Age Versus Actual Age

An Important Appraisal Question Have you ever thought about how the components of your home contribute to the age of your home? The roof, siding, trim and windows, how long do they all last? How about the furnace and water heater? While electrical and plumbing fixtures, carpet, vinyl, flooring ma...