Patent ID: 8458072

Claim:
A computer implemented method for determining the capacity of geographic areas to support specific mortgage loan products by identifying indices of variables associated with potential buyers in the geographic areas, the method comprising the steps of: obtaining, by a computer, a profile for a mortgage loan product, the profile having characteristics of potential buyers of the mortgage loan product; identifying, by a computer, variables that characterize desired buyers of the mortgage loan product from the profile; obtaining, by a computer, additional information from another source and extracting identified characteristics of desired buyers of the mortgage loan product from the additional information; performing, by a computer, a regression on the additional information to determine an extent to which the variables that characterize desired buyers of the mortgage loan product are correlated to the profile having characteristics of potential buyers of the mortgage loan product; assigning, by a computer, a statistical score to each of the variables based upon the regression; storing the variables in an index, in a computer memory, and weighing each of the variables based on the statistical score; determining a formula for the index, wherein the formula implements the variables and quantifies a number for potential buyers of the mortgage loan product for any given geographical area based upon the statistical scores for the variables in the given geographical area; executing, by a computer, the formula against information associated with the geographic area; and dividing the geographic area into sub-groups and assigning, by a computer, a sub-group score to each sub-group based on the number of variables in the sub-group that have a relatively high correlation to the profile, wherein each sub-group is analyzed to determine the capacity of the geographic area to support the mortgage loan product.