Clear Capital, a Truckee, Calif.-headquartered provider of valuations, condition inspections and other risk assessment services for mortgage originators, secondary market institutions, mortgage servicers and resellers, recently used its Disaster Tracking Service (DTS) to identify properties that may have been adversely affected by wildfires in Southern California.
"Our staff recognizes that circumstances such as the Southern California fires and Hurricane Katrina leave financial institutions temporarily blind as to the condition of their collateral. This can be very unnerving for them," says Kevin Marshall, co-founder and chief investment officer of Clear Capital.
The company says it generated daily footprints of the wildfires and obtained data daily on fire boundaries and the direction of travel through many sources, including the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). MODIS information is created from a satellite-produced heat map of the affected region. The DTS engine then tabulated USGS and MODIS data to produce a conservative geo-coordinate outline of the fires.
Clear Capital next delivered relevant information to customers and provided them with the option of ordering Clear Capital Post Disaster Inspection reports (PDIs) to obtain a timely inspection of the properties and neighborhood condition.