Realty Data Corporation starts mortgage revolution

Real Estate Weekly, April 21, 2004 by Elaine Misonzhnik

David Drucker believes in changing the mortgage business one title at a time.

A veteran accountant, Drucker currently serves as chief executive officer of Realty Data Corp., a company that provides lenders with title reports with lightning speed and efficiency.

"The mortgage process takes a long time, it takes about 60 days for someone to purchase a home," Drucker explains.

"And it's a very arduous task. What our company has done is take one piece of that process, the title process, and made it take seconds instead of weeks. We take all the necessary data and make a report [which becomes available online almost immediately]."

Though an automated mortgage process sounds logical today, according to Drucker, it was difficult at first to get the company off the ground. First, there was the purely physical challenge of finding and organizing New York property records at a time when the Internet wasn't the main source of information.

"We are talking about a city with a vast population and numerous kinds of properties, including co-ops [information on which is difficult to get]," he says.

"And we had to go through all those files and records, find what we needed, buy film and discs and convert them into a [different format]."

Then, he and his staff had to convince clients that the new technology was a good thing.

"I think that people in general are reluctant to change, but once they get over that hurdle, they embrace it," Drucker says.

"In the beginning, people were very comfortable doing it all the old-fashioned way. It took us a little time to get up and get going, but now most companies realize that they need to make a change, otherwise they'll be outdated."

So how was Drucker able to see the changes coming so far ahead of everyone? It seems that he was always in search of something new and exciting. Whatever company Drucker worked for, he seemed to be the golden goose--expanding and improving the business within a couple of years. At the beginning of his career, while working for Jomar Realty, a mortgage brokerage firm, he managed to add a Long Island division. While he was at the Real Estate Funding Center, the company experienced an unprecedented growth spurt. And as president of Sterling National Mortgage Company, he brought in a new lending system that increased productivity by more than 100%.

"Throughout the late 1990's, I was looking for different companies to invest in and I found Realty Data Corp.," Drucker explains.

"We started the company that we have today and now we are up to 20 people and our goal is to do some tremendous expansion this year--we just got into the Florida market, we are looking to go into Philadelphia, Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland."

To keep its competitive edge Realty Data tries to give its customers more than just a title report--it tries to provide an intelligible overall picture of the property. It adds information on former bankruptcies, judgements, liens and anything else that might be important to a potential lender. And because Realty Data is an Internet company, that information can be accessed within seconds.

"At the time I came to Realty Data, I was not a computer expert, but over time it has transformed into a technology company," Drucker says.

"I think the Internet helped tremendously. Fast access to information is something that the industry wanted for a long time, but never could get."

Today, Realty Data numbers Title Insurance, First American Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank among its clients. According to Drucker, most lenders are really excited about companies like his--they can outsource the detective work to someone else and concentrate on their core business.

"In the past few years, the banks have changed the way they do business --they outsource their operations to companies that order the credit, order the title and, in some cases, close the loan for the bank," he says.

"All of these companies are national companies and they need to automate the process, so they are very enthusiastic about [us]."

So what's in store for Realty Data's future?

"This is a pivotal years for us, a turning point," Drucker says. "We just released a new version of our application. We are right in the middle of negotiating new contracts with third party providers right now. And we are getting raving reviews from our clients. They are thrilled with our product because that's what they want."