Flueid: Real Estate Verification of Title Software

Eliminating Roadblocks to a “One-Click” Real Estate Transaction

How embedded title decisions are the real key to an on-demand customer experience.

By Eric Swenson, Flueid’s Chairman of the Board

In our previous blogs, the authors – our co-founders and executive team members – pointed out how their experiences in both tech and real estate revealed a stark pain point that, despite being evident for over 100 years, no one seemed interested in, or capable of, solving: automating the downstream title underwriting process.

Since much of the homebuying experience involves the consumer, industry innovation has targeted the upstream process to meet the real-time expectations of the public. This has allowed lenders and financial institutions to apply the “Amazonian effect” to mortgage lending.

Rocket Mortgage does this brilliantly. In a matter of minutes, a prospective homebuyer/owner can put in a few pieces of information – from their phone – and receive an immediate answer about their loan pre-qualification. Talk about exceptional customer service.

But there’s something more.

Whether it’s with a loan pre-qualification, or a pocket full of cash, there is still one critical milestone standing in the way of scheduling a closing, and that’s title.

Think about it: You can go online and, in an hour or less, purchase or trade in your car through on-demand services like Carvana, Vroom and others. But buying or refinancing a home takes weeks. Why?

Both the vehicle and homebuying processes share similar “pillars” around the due diligence process that need to be satisfied:

“Both require an immediate transfer of title.”

In the real estate transaction process, the third point right here is what has been blocking the road to an immediate decision to close, and an automated closing process.

Title is the foundation that bridges and then unlocks the full transaction – because even if a buyer comes with cash in hand, the home is not theirs without a title transfer, and that can’t happen until the key players come together and all the information is validated.

Without unlocking title, we cannot deliver the truly on-demand real estate transaction experience consumers know and expect.

The data & innovation roadblock

So how did we get here? Well, real estate is by and large very localized; thus, so is the data. Every individual property record is filed with a single county recorder.

The search got easier with computers, and some large counties began to index individual property records for easier searching and examinations to help render a decision for title. Still to this day, however, that automation is not something shared by every county. It’s only been fairly recently that the data became readily available from traditional public records to allow us to create models from algorithms, data amalgamation and cross-triangulation with other data types.

Additionally, much title innovation is focused on underwriting at the core; so faster clearance results -- not decisioning. And there’s a huge difference.

Decisioning is the ability to layer data, logic and title underwriting results together to generate insights that expedite an entire workflow, not just one component within it.

That means there is greater opportunity beyond just “instant title.” It’s a decisioning opportunity rooted in title’s data and insights that will not only create a faster underwriting process, but a one-click closing process.

The industry needs a solution that can tap into that decisioning opportunity and embed title data across the real estate transaction infrastructure to drive macro change.

Title was our proving ground, decisioning is our core

That’s why Flueid’s been focused on decisioning from the start as our “True North.”

But we knew we first had to enable automated title underwriting before we could unlock the process.

So, we started by using traditional and non-traditional data from public records to automate a 100-year-old decision-making process through transparent logic flows that are backed and approved by underwriters.

Now, these immediate, underwriter-backed decisions (and associated data and insights) can be used to streamline and automate the entire real estate transaction, upstream and down, from end-to-end. This means lenders, title agents, and servicers, among others, have the actionable information needed to make informative decisions that get the consumer in their home as fast as possible, and keep them there. This includes:

It’s not a mysterious black box solution: We are taking a traditional process and making it extensible, so it becomes native and embedded in the process. We could go back into the decision-making repository and walk the process back, explaining each decision point logic. And, since the Flueid system is configurable, underwriters can incorporate their unique underwriting practices into the logic flow in support of their business objectives.

The security we designed into the platform from the very beginning is also central to the consumer experience. It was built with data security at the core; all this logic used in the decision-making process is behind the client’s firewall, and every transaction is encrypted. Our annual external audit ensures that this security framework is sustained despite any changes that may have occurred. The result? The consumer’s data stays where the consumer chooses it to stay. Period.

Further, because we’re an independent solution, mortgage companies can still fulfill the consumer’s choice of a title company without creating another workflow, eliminating another bottleneck to closing.

Embedding title data to drive one-click homebuying

The innovation monopolization in the upstream processes is what compelled Flueid’s co-founders to be an independent company that provides an independent solution embedded across the real estate transaction infrastructure. It’s a distribution strategy that can help solve the entire transaction versus just the upstream consumer processes. And it solves that one huge remaining roadblock that only clear title can solve: an immediate schedule to close.

By fulfilling the title pillar and focusing on decisioning, Flueid can support lenders in delivering a one-click close – not just a one-click pre-qualify. And that’s a truly exceptional customer experience.