Jargon, acronyms, including several new terminology, abound in BatchData API documentation. A collection of terminology and definitions related to our API may be found in this glossary.

Absentee Owner (property): An absentee owner is a property owner whose primary residence is not the subject property. Core API primarily uses the property mailing address to determine this. If a property’s address is different from its mailing address we consider the property owner to be an absentee owner.

Active Auction (property): Properties are often auctioned as part of the foreclosure process. A property is considered an active auction property if the property has an auction date and the auction date is after the current date.

Active Foreclosure (property): A property is considered an active foreclosure property if either of the two following conditions are met:

Active Listing (property): A property is considered an active listing property if its MLS status is Active.

Address Verification: Address verification is the process of determining if an address is valid. There are two common definitions of “valid” used at Batch: 1) valid USPS and 2) valid property address. An address is a valid USPS address if the address exists in the USPS database of addresses. An address is a valid property address if it matches an address in our property database (which originates from county assessor offices). Most of the time, valid USPS addresses are also valid property addresses. Exceptions include ranged address (e.g. 123-125 Main Street) which sometime appear on property assessor records. USPS does not consider this to be a valid address because it actually refers to multiple addresses (i.e. 123 Main St, 124 Main St and 125 Main St). At Batch we prefer the valid property address for address verification because our customers are primarily interested in whether a given address can be bought or sold. They are less interested in whether the address can receive mail.

Assessed Value (property): A property's assessment is based on its market value. Market value is how much a property would sell for under normal conditions. Assessments are determined by the local assessor, government officials who estimate the value of real property within a municipality. Properties are typically assessed at a uniform percentage of market value each year. In other words, all taxable properties in a city or town should be assessed at market value or at the same percentage of market value. For example, if the market value of a home is $200,000, and assessments in that community are at 50 percent of market value, the home’s assessed value should be $150,000.

Assessor Parcel Number (APN): APNs are unique identifiers designed to help the assessor, tax collector, other government agencies and property owners track real estate parcels. APNs are only unique within a given county. In Batch databases, counties are typically identified by their FIPS code so the combination of FIPS code and APN can be considered unique.

Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy is a legal proceeding involving a person or business that is unable to repay their outstanding debts. A property has its bankruptcy flag set if there is an involuntary lien associated with the property and the involuntary lien has a bankruptcy chapter or case number associated with it.

Calculated Bathroom Count: Property listings will often show that a property has 2.5 bathrooms or 1.75 bathrooms. These are calculated bathroom counts. They are calculated as follows. Each bathroom utility is counted as one-quarter, so you add and deduct a quarter for each one, as the case may be. So, a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower is considered a three-quarter bath. A bathroom with just a sink and a toilet is a half-bath. This is a useful shorthand for referring to bathroom counts, but be aware that these values are not additive. In other words, a property with a full bathroom, a three-quarter bathroom and a half-bath doesn’t have 2.25 bathrooms.

Cash Buyer: A cash buyer is someone who can afford to buy a property without the need for additional funding, like a mortgage. A property is considered to be a cash buyer property if either of the following is true:

The first open lien (mortgage) associated with the property has a lender type of Subprime Lender or the cash purchase flag is true or it has a loan type of Cash or it has a last sale document type of Cash Sale Deed.

The first concurrent mortgage associated with the property has a loan amount of zero.

Comparable Properties: Real estate comps are recently sold homes that are like the property you’re trying to buy or sell in terms of location, size, condition and features. Comps, an abbreviation of comparable sales, are used to determine a home’s fair market value through the sales comparison approach to pricing property.

Concurrent Mortgage: A concurrent mortgage is a mortgage that was taken out at the time the property was purchased.

Corporate Owned (property): A corporate owned property is one that is owned completely or in part by a corporate entity (e.g. corporate, LLC, etc.). A property is considered corporate owned if the corporate indicator flag is set for any of the property owners.

County Assessor: An assessor is a local government official who determines the value of a property for local real estate taxation purposes.

Deed: A property deed is a legal document that transfers property ownership from a seller/grantor to a buyer/grantee. A deed contains a description of the property (including property lines) and denotes the seller/grantor and the buyer/grantee.

Demographics Data (property): Batch augments its assessor property data with demographic data from a different vendor. This includes information about the property’s head of household and the household as a whole.

Do Not Call (DNC): The National Do Not Call Registry is a database maintained by the United States federal government, listing the telephone numbers of individuals and families who have requested that telemarketers not contact them. Certain callers are required by federal law to respect this request. Batch buys DNC data from a data vendor and disseminates it via Core API.

Estimated Equity (property): A property’s estimated equity is the appraised value or estimated value minus the amount owed on all mortgages.

Estimated Value (property): The estimated value of a property is an estimate of the current market value of the property.

Expired Listing (property): An expired listing is an MLS listing that failed to sell and was inactive longer than the contract period that the realtor and seller agreed upon, causing the listing to expire.

FIPS Code: A FIPS county code is a Federal Information Processing Standards code which uniquely identified counties and county equivalents in the United States. The codes are 5-digit numbers.

Flip Length: The number of months between the last sale and prior sale of a property.

Flip Profit: The difference between the last sale price and the prior sale price.

Flipping: Within the real estate industry, the term is used by investors to describe the process of buying, rehabbing, and selling properties for profit.

Foreclosure: Foreclosure is the legal process by which a lender seizes and sells a home or property after a borrower is unable to meet their repayment obligation.

Free and Clear: In property law, the term free and clear refers to ownership without legal encumbrances, such as a lien or mortgage. So, for example: a person owns a house free and clear if he has paid off the mortgage and no creditor has filed a lien against it.

Geocoding: Geocoding, also known as address geocoding or forward geocoding, is the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a location on the Earth's surface.

Geolocation: Geolocation is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object.

Geolocation precision: Geolocation precision refers to the precision of the geolocation data returned by geocoding and property API endpoints. It can range from rooftop precision (highest precision) to Zip9 centroid (lowest precision). Also known as geostatus.

Geostatus: Geostatus is a synonym for geolocation precision.

High Equity (property): A high equity property is a property where the amount owed on the mortgage(s) is a small percentage of the value of the property. The current Core logic considers high equity to be an LTV lower than 0.8% (i.e. equity of more than 20%).

Homeowner Association (HOA): A homeowner's association (HOA) is an organization in a subdivision, planned community, or condominium building that makes and enforces rules for the properties and residents. Those who purchase property within an HOA's jurisdiction automatically become members and are required to pay dues, known as HOA fees.

Inherited (property): Inheritance is the common term for property or any possession that comes to an heir. Core API defines an inherited property as a residential property whose last sale document type is one of the following:

Involuntary Lien (property): Involuntary liens are liens that are placed on a property by an outside authority against the will of the owner. Rather than mortgage lenders placing a lien on the property, involuntary liens are typically placed on properties from regulatory authorities for unpaid debt obligations.

Land Use Code: This code is used to identify the use of a property. This code is parsed to determine a property’s property type category and property type detail.

Listed Below Market Price (property): A property is flagged as listed below market price if the property is currently listed and the listing price is lower than the estimated value or the property has sold and the sold price is less than the estimated value.

Litigious Person (phone): A litigious person is someone who is known to have sued someone under the TCPA act. This is someone we don’t want to contact and we don’t want our customers contacting them either. The TCPA endpoints return phone numbers associated with litigious people.

Loan to Value Ratio (LTV): The loan to value ratio is the property’s loan value (total open liens) divided by the property value. A property that is free and clear has an LTV of zero. A property that is underwater (worth less than the loan) has an LTV greater than one.

Locality: In Batch, locality refers to any geographical entity smaller than a county. This includes city, city alias, township, suburb, neighborhood, colloquial name and historic district name. So when we refer to a property’s localities, we mean the complete list of all locality names associated with a property.

Lot: In real estate, a lot or plot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner. A plot is essentially considered a parcel of real property.

Low Equity (property): A low equity property is a property where the amount owed on the mortgage(s) is a high percentage of the value of the property. The current Core logic considers high equity to be an LTV higher than 0.8% (i.e. equity of less than 20%).

Mailing Address (property): The mailing address of a property is the address to which property tax bills are sent. We also use the property mailing address to uniquely identify property owners until we can find a better way to identify property owners.

Multiple Listing System (MLS): A multiple listing service is an organization with a suite of services that real estate brokers use to establish contractual offers of cooperation and compensation and accumulate and disseminate information to enable appraisals.

Notice of Default: In the context of mortgage foreclosure, a notice of default is a formal notice that a lender filed with courts to notify the borrower who has failed to make payments that the lender intends to conduct a sale foreclosure.

On Market (property): A property is considered to be on the market if there is an MLS listing for the property with any of the following statuses: active, pending or contingent.

Open Lien (property): An open lien is a mortgage that has not been paid off. In other words, the property owner still owes money on the mortgage.

Opt Out (phone): Occasionally people contact Batch to inform us that they don’t want information about them to be shared via our apps or APIs. Essentially, they want to opt out of our database and services. Core API is in the process of developing API endpoints that will make it easier for our apps to create opt out webpages.

Owner Occupied (property): An absentee owner is a property owner whose primary residence is the subject property. Core API primarily uses the property mailing address to determine this. If a property’s address is the same as its mailing address we consider the property owner to be a owner occupied.

Out of State Owner (property): An out of state owner is one whose mailing address state differs from the property address state.

Parcel: Parcel of real property means a single lot, the boundaries of which are set forth in a single deed or similar document. It is uniquely identified by an assessor parcel number. A property (uniquely identified by its street address) may have one or more parcels.

Parcel Centroid (geocoding): The centroid of a parcel is the geometric center of the boundaries of the parcel.

Phone Number Score: A quality score for skip tracing phone numbers. A higher score means higher confidence that the phone number will reach the intended property owner.

Phone Number Type: The type of phone number (land line or mobile).

Preforeclosure: The first phase of a legal proceeding that ultimately can conclude in a property being repossessed from a defaulted borrower. In pre-foreclosure, the lender files a notice of default on the property because the borrowing owner exceeds the contractual terms for delinquent payments.

Primary Parcel: Given our current definition of property (unique address), a property can have one or more parcels. The primary parcel is the one with the largest total building square footage. If there are no buildings on any of the parcels then the primary parcel is the one with the highest assessed value.

Probate: Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law and accepted as a valid public document that is the true last testament of the deceased.

Property: According to Batch’s current definition of property (and that used in apps like BLS), the term property refers to the primary parcel associated with a given street address.

Property Autocomplete: Property autocomplete refers to the Core API endpoint that offers property autocomplete features comparable to Google’s address autocomplete. As the user starts typing, the autocomplete service tries to suggest the most relevant matching street address, street, city, state, county or locality.

Property Features: Property building features are attributes like air conditioning, garage, fireplace, etc.

Property Owner Profile: A property owner profile aggregates information about all properties owned by a given person. Currently, Batch uses mailing address to uniquely identify a property owner. However, if a property owner has his/her tax bills sent to multiple addresses, they would have multiple property owner profiles as a result.

Property Type Category: The Data Engineering ETL pipeline parse property land use codes to determine property type category and property type detail. Property type categories include residential, commercial, office, industrial and agricultural, recreational, and exempt.

Property Type Detail: Property type detail differentiates the different uses of properties within a property type category. For example, properties within the residential category might have the following -

Quickfilter: A quickfilter is the label we assign to business logic that would filter or constrain property records in a particular way. For example, the absentee owner quickfilter would constrain property results to include only properties where the mailing address is different from the property address. The results returned by a quickfilter are known as a quicklist. So the absentee owner quickfilter returns the absentee owner quicklist. Examples of other quickfilters are active listing, bankruptcy, cash buyer, expired listing, etc.

Quicklist: A quicklist is the set of property results returned by a quickfilter.

Reachable (phone): Reachable means that the number has been issued to a carrier so it is a good, valid number.

Recently Sold: A recently sold property is a property with a last sold date in the last 12 months.

Rent Estimate (property): A rent estimate is an estimate of the monthly rent that could be earned if a property was listed for rent. Batch gets this information from a third-party vendor. They use a rental comp algorithm similar to our property comps.

Reverse Geocoding: Reverse geocoding is the process of converting a location as described by geographic coordinates to a human-readable address or place name. It is the opposite of forward geocoding, hence the term reverse.

Rooftop Precision (geocoding): Rooftop geocoding is the highest level of geocoding accuracy.

Skip Tracing: Skip tracing is the process of getting contact information (phone number, email address and mailing address) for a person. Batch’s skip tracing product differs from traditional skip tracing products in that it tries to find the contact information of the owner of a property regardless of whether the resident of the property is the owner or tenant (renter).

Tax Default: Tax default refers to unpaid property taxed. Batch’s tax default information includes the year of the tax default. A properties tax default quickfilter flag is set if the tax delinquent year is at least three years ago.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA): TCPA is the abbreviation for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The law restricts telemarketing certain phone calls, text messages, and facsimiles. If a phone number in Batch’s database has its TCPA flag set, then it is known to be owned by a litigious person.

Tested (phone): Tested means that the number has been dialed by one of our vendor’s customers over the last six months and generated a 200 OK SIP code, meaning it is connected.

Tired Landlord: A property’s tired landlord quickfilter flag is set if all of the following are true:

USPS: The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent division of the federal government in charge of postal services in the United States.

Vacant (property): A vacant property is one with no residents. Batch gets its vacancy data from the USPS. However, USPS assumes a property is vacant if a property cannot receive mail (no structure or mailbox) or if the resident is not collecting their mail. As such, a small percent of properties that we show as vacant aren’t actually vacant. The residents simply aren’t collecting their mail.

Valid Address: This term has different meanings depending on the context. USPS considers an address to be valid if it exists in their address database. A subset of these valid addresses are considered deliverable (i.e. they can currently receive mail). Real estate investors consider an address to be valid if it can be bought and sold. Core API uses the real estate definition of the term. A property is valid if it can be determined to physically exist regardless of whether the USPS considers its address to be valid.

Zip Code: A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Introduced in 1963, the basic format consisted of five digits. Zip codes usually correspond to USPS post offices.

Zip+4: In 1983, the United State Postal Service introduced the ZIP+4 code, sometimes also referred to as Zip9. It included the five digits of the Zip Code, followed by a hyphen and four digits that designated a more specific location (normally the USPS carrier route).

Zip9 Centroid (geocoding): Zip9 centroid refers to the geometric center of a Zip9 (or Zip+4) area. It is the least precise form of geocoding supported by Batch.