Fidelity National Information Solutions (FNIS) has grown quickly, with its stock prices doubling in less than six months to over $30 a share, give or take a fearful sellers' day on the NASDAQ.

While FNIS could be compared to Homestore in its high-flying days of fast acquisitions and a top-heavy strategy to become the Yahoo! of verticals, it's looking more like the Homestore of today has little in common with FNIS.

Homestore is a marketing company for Realtors and real estate-related companies. Its products and services are geared for promotion. Homestore has abandoned transaction management tools, preferring to concentrate on the loyal following of its client management software Top Producer, which includes programs to assist online and offline marketing for Realtors.

FNIS, although it also sells a client management software program to Realtors, is not interested in online marketing, according to its president Eric Swenson.

Conversely, Homestore has a small footprint in MLS data management of MLS information through its subsidiary Wyldfyre. A major business model for FNIS is the management of approximately half of the agent desktops in America, through its MLS information management subsidiary VistaInfo. More lucrative is the collection and brokering of tax roll data to MLSs, lenders, appraisers, and title companies where the company says it has 82 percent of all the records in the U.S.

In fact, MLSs and FNIS may depend on each other - the MLSs, brokers and agents need tax roll data to find solds that were not included in the MLS (15 percent to 40 percent of sales depending on the area and determination of sellers to FSBO their own homes) while FNIS's data to lenders, appraisers, and title companies isn't complete without the MLSs' for-sales and pendings.

Homestore's failed its transaction management platform with eRealtor, by former management's inability to come up with a way to sell it.

Undaunted by the failures of competitors, FNIS's strategy is to combine key tasks that can be automated and put them on an open architecture transaction engine for brokers and agents which is based on the powerful transaction management engine already in use by lenders and title companies. Ultimately, the idea is to streamline data entry, lower risk through better data documentation and entry, and lower operating costs to brokers and agents.

Then why is everyone from the NAR to individual MLSs scared to death of FNIS? Because everyone in the real estate industry, even competitors, is or potentially is a customer of one or more products and services provided by FNIS.

Find out in this exclusive Agent News interview by publisher Blanche Evans why FNIS believes the industry should have nothing to fear.

B.E.: For Realtors, most of your products are pretty self-explanatory. You have online MLS information management services, you have contact, lead and business management software. What are your residential disclosure products?

E.S.: In California, a seller must disclose to a buyer of real property certain public records of information, like proximity to earthquake, fire, and wind zones, and some environmental. That is all data that we have and provide in a report form to agents, and agents use that as a disclosure for buyers. There is every probability that those types of disclosures will grow , because of liability issues, and we have all sorts of data that powers those.

B.E.: What about mold?

E.S.: I don't know where there is a database for mold, but there are a lot of contractors that are providing services. Some areas are more troubled than others. It's a big topic, and most homeowner's insurance are now excluding mold from policies and any type of water damage because of huge payouts. Errors and omissions coverage is tougher to come by for real estate agents and that will be even tougher because of issues like mold. If big companies are excluding coverage today, then homeowners may look at brokers for these types of issues and it could create problem with E&O.

We are looking at a sister company to provider cost effective E&O insurance and the idea would be to combine the use of transaction management that would compliment the issuance of E&O coverage. The thinking is some E&O claims have to do with he said/she said lack of documentation. Our transaction management engine solves that with the logging of key events and delivery of disclosures so a real estate agent could have a defense. We're trying to bundle E&O coverage with the use of a transaction management engine.

B.E.: E&O could be another growth area for Fidelity, with some states making broker-only licensure a statute. In Colorado, all broker associates carry their own E&O.

E.S.: Liability is an issue. When brokers' renegotiated coverage, it was two to three times what it was last year. Right now it costs a broker over $1000 per agent per year to carry E&O - two and a half times what it was for the same coverage as last year.

We develop software to develop efficiencies and we are thinking of ways to use software for risk management, and reducing the risk and costs for E&O. And no, we aren't going to buy the company.

B.E.: What about property records? Who is the customer for that, and why is it separate and not under lender services?

E.S.: We have our company divided into lenders and real estate professionals, so we are then divided into:

1. Data solutions - services to create the well of data, data can be used as a solid company asset to use across all sales channels to Realtors, lenders, risk managers, title companies,

2. Outsourcing - vendor management, we also have our own print company,

3. Solutions - technology solutions like Agent Office and MLS applications.

B.E.: There's a fear factor out there about you. You're growing so fast, your stock's been rising, you are the new gorilla. One consultant questioned whether you were the offspring of Microsoft and Homestore. What do you say about that? How do you want people to perceive you?

E.S.: I want us to be perceived as a facilitator to complete real estate transactions, through technology solutions or data that can drive solutions.

B.E.: Are you the new gorilla?

E.S.: First, I don't like that word, gorilla. We are very serious about being the largest provider of data for real estate information, and providing technology tools. We are very serious about being a facilitator in helping real estate professionals transact more often. We are a pure business-to-business play. You will continue to see things from us to help Realtors and lenders transact.

B.E.: Unlike your competitor Homestore?

E.S.: I think there are a lot of individual competitors who might have one application or regionalized data that competes with ours. There are several credit companies, flood competitors, and software vendors to the real estate industry like an MLS system, but if you combine all our end-to-end solutions and our data combined with the solutions, we are very different from a Homestore or Microsoft. We are not building portals, we aren't in the advertising business, we aren't trying to get eyeballs to our site.

We are a public company, we have real live earnings open for public view and we have aggregated a lot of different businesses and we are profitable. No one has anything to fear - we are an enabler.

B.E.: What's your relationship with the NAR?

E.S.: We don't have a formal relationship, but we are very open with NAR with what our company is about, and we are open to working side by side with NAR to help facilitate transactions.

About 400, 0000 real estate professionals use either our data or technology solutions, that is broken into MLSs, Agent Office, our desktop Online Agent (Agent 2000) and data that we deliver through Web sites, the MLS or title companies.

We provide data to title companies. A lot of our clients are real estate brokers who own their own title companies and we are a facilitator to help them remargin their business to help them set up transaction management or to set up title companies. We have Fidelity National Financial that provides agency services to Realtors and brokers. Weichert Realtors, for example is an agent of Fidelity National Financial, and we provide the underwriting support to those brokers.

B.E.: So to sum it up, you see yourselves as a company that helps the real estate industry remargin profits.

E.S.: Profitability for the Realtor and lender is key to our business. We help them save money or make money.

Published: May 31, 2002

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Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. For more articles by Blanche, click here.