An expansion of data available from RealtyTrac willprovide credit unions with a rich new source of information aboutthe properties members finance with mortgages or home equity loans.

Long an established source of information about financiallydistressed and foreclosed properties, the firm announced last weekthat it will also offer information about a property's tax, deedand other records.

“For nearly 20 years, RealtyTrac has been a market leader in B2Band B2C applications for comprehensive real estate data, and we areexcited to expand our data footprint and continue our mission ofbringing more data to more people,” said Jamie Moyle, CEO atRealtyTrac when announcing the availability of the new data.“RealtyTrac will bring the same creativity, flexibility andtransparency to the market for tax, deed and mortgage data that itbrought to the foreclosure data market more than 10 years ago andthat it brought to the local and environmental data market twoyears ago with the acquisition of Homefacts.”

RealtyTrac acquired the data due to a court-ordered settlementof anti-trust litigation brought by the Federal Trade Commission toCoreLogic's acquisition of DataQuick Information Systems.

That $661 million deal would concentrate the market for realestate data too severely, in the FTCs view, and the marketregulator insisted CoreLogic license much of its real estate datato RealtyTrac.

Brian Mushaney, executive vice president of Data Solutions forRealtyTrac, said the firm looked forward to working with interestedcredit unions to license the use of its data for their mortgage andother loan operations.

Mushaney said the data will help credit unions better understandand perform due diligence on property that is serving as collateralfor mortgage loans, and will also help credit unions market otherloans.

For example, a credit union could search the newly availabledata to determine which of its members might want a home equityloan or line or credit, or which members might already have a homeequity loan from another lender that could be refinanced.

“Whether customers desire a bulk file license, custom API or amore creative solution, RealtyTrac has the internal knowledge andexpertise to quickly enable innovative new products that continueto challenge the status quo of buying, selling and analyzing realestate,” Mushaney said.