VISTA Information Solutions, Inc. Launches New Residential Property Disclosure Product

N/AInformation Solutions, Inc., a supplier of property risk information and homeowners' insurance underwriting information solutions, has launched a new enterprise that will focus on marketing products to the residential real estate industry. In conjunction with the creation of the new division, VISTA Home Disclosure, two new residential property information services were also announced: the California Natural Hazard Disclosure Reports and Environmental Disclosure Reports, which is available throughout the United States.

Under current California Law, home sellers or their real estate agents must disclose all "known" conditions that could affect the value of a home for sale - including whether the property is in a designated flood zone, earthquake fault zone, seismic zone or in a wild land fire area. A new law known as "AB6x Natural Hazard Disclosure", scheduled to go into effect on June 1, 1998, requires three new natural hazard disclosures by the sellers and agents. These cover homes in areas of potential flooding after a dam failure, federally designated flood zones and very high fire hazard areas. The new law also consolidates all six hazard disclosures into one new natural hazard disclosure statement required for virtually all California residential real estate sale transactions as part of the sales contract forms.

"Over 550,000 residential properties were sold in California in 1997 and indications are that this number will increase substantially in 1998," said Thomas R. Gay, president and CEO of VISTA. "In order to serve this large growing market for natural hazard disclosure information within California, VISTA has used its experience in developing risk information databases and systems to effectively deliver an AB6x state-wide disclosure solution."

According to the company, VISTA technology currently processes and delivers over 1 million residential risk information report transactions each month for locations across the United States to the Insurance, Financial Services, Environmental Engineering and Real Estate industries.

The California Natural Hazard Report identifies whether or not a property is located within any one of the six risk zones required by the California law including: California Fire Protection Areas, High Fire Areas, Federal Emergency Management Agency Flood Areas, California Dam Inundation Areas, Seismic Risk Areas (landslide and liquefaction) and earthquake Fault Zones.

"Our primary objective is to serve the real estate professional in obtaining the required disclosure reports and interpretative support quickly and accurately," said Mark Catone, vice president of Product Development for VISTA. "This information is not easy to obtain by the real estate community, is dynamic, often difficult to interpret and is critical to the seller and agent. To solve these problems, we have automated the entire interpretation and report production process saving the real estate professional time and allowing them to focus on completing the property sale." Catone pointed out that VISTA's technology and products are endorsed by a number of state banking associations and national industry groups including the California Bankers Association, American Bankers Association and the <%=company%>

The Environmental Disclosure Report utilizes VISTA's experience in providing environmental risk and due diligence information services to the environmental engineering, legal and financial services markets since 1988. VISTA expanded into the insurance underwriting market through its acquisition of the Geographic Underwriting System (GUS) and a long-term partnership with the Insurance Services Office, based in New York.
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