DOI: 10.57761/pbej-2v24
title: Cotality Smart Data Platform: Owner Transfer and Mortgage

description: If you have questions or concerns, please contact Ron Nakao at ronbo@stanford.edu.
description: Title: Cotality Smart Data Platform (SDP): Owner Transfer and Mortgage

The Owner Transfer and Mortgage data covers over 450 million properties, and includes over 50 years of sales history. The tables were generated in June 2024, and cover all U.S. states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Washington, D.C.

Formerly known as CoreLogic Smart Data Platform: Owner Transfer & Mortgage.
description: 

In the United States, parcel data is public record information that describes a division of land (also referred to as "property" or "real estate"). Each parcel is given a unique identifier called an Assessor’s Parcel Number or APN. The two principal types of records maintained by county government agencies for each parcel of land are deed and property tax records. When a real estate transaction takes place (e.g. a change in ownership), a property deed must be signed by both the buyer and seller. The deed will then be filed with the County Recorder’s offices, sometimes called the County Clerk-Recorder or other similar title. Property tax records are maintained by County Tax Assessor’s offices; they show the amount of taxes assessed on a parcel and include a detailed description of any structures or buildings on the parcel, including year built, square footages, building type, amenities like a pool, etc. There is not a uniform format for storing parcel data across the thousands of counties and county equivalents in the U.S.; laws and regulations governing real estate/property sales vary by state. Counties and county equivalents also have inconsistent approaches to archiving historical parcel data.



To fill researchers’ needs for uniform parcel data, Cotality collects, cleans, and normalizes public records that they collect from U.S. County Assessor and Recorder offices. Cotality augments this data with information gathered from other public and non-public sources (e.g., loan issuers, real estate agents, landlords, etc.). The Stanford Libraries has purchased bulk extracts from Cotality's parcel data, including mortgage, owner transfer, pre-foreclosure, and historical and contemporary tax assessment data. Data is bundled into pipe-delimited text files, which are uploaded to Data Farm (Redivis) for preview, extraction and analysis.



For more information about how the data was prepared for Redivis, please see [Cotality 2024 GitLab](<https://code.stanford.edu/sul-cidr/cotality-2024/>).




description: The Owner Transfer and Mortgage data covers over 450 million properties, and includes over 50 years of sales history. The tables were generated in June 2024, and cover all U.S. states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Washington, D.C. The Owner Transfer data provides historical information about property sales and ownership-related transactions, including full, nominal, and quitclaim transactions (involving a change in title/ownership). It contains comprehensive property and transaction information, such as property characteristics, current ownership, transaction history, title company, cash purchase/foreclosure/resale/short sale indicators, and buyer information.



The Mortgage data provides historical information at the mortgage level, including purchase, refinance, equity, as well as details associated with each transaction, such as lender, loan amount, loan date, interest rate, etc. Mortgage details include mortgage amount, type of loan (conventional, FHA, VHA), mortgage rate type, mortgage purpose (cash out first, consolidation, standalone subordinate), mortgage ARM features, and mortgage indicators such as fixed-rate, conforming loan, construction loan, and private party. The Mortgage data also includes subordinate mortgage types, rate details, and lender details (NMLS ID, Loan Company, Loan Officers).



The Property, Mortgage, Owner Transfer, Historical Property and Pre-Foreclosure data can be linked on the `CLIP`, a unique identification number assigned to each property.





Mortgage records can be linked to a transaction using the `MORTGAGE_COMPOSITE_TRANSACTION_ID`.



For more information about included variables, please see:

- **cotality\_sdp\_owner\_transfer\_data\_dictionary\_2024.txt**
- **cotality\_sdp\_mortgage\_data\_dictionary\_2024.txt**
- **Mortgage\_v3.xlsx**
- **Owner Transfer\_v3.xlsx**

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For a count of records per FIPS code, please see **cotality\_sdp\_owner\_transfer\_counts\_2024.txt** and **cotality\_sdp\_mortgage\_counts\_2024.txt**.



For more information about how the Cotality Smart Data Platform: Owner Transfer and Mortgage data compares to legacy data, please see **2025\_Legacy\_Content\_Mapping.pdf*****.***