When Florida real estate professional Susan Hicks discovered the app Forewarn over a year ago, she was shocked to learn that for a service costing about $20 a month she could instantaneously retrieve detailed data on prospective clients with only their phone number.
  • sunzu@kbin.run
    8·
    5 months ago

    Forewarn is primarily marketed to and used by the real estate industry, and it has been penetrating that market at a rapid clip. Although some real estate agents say the financial information it returns saves time when finding clients most likely to have the budget for the houses they’re looking at, most agents and associations tout it primarily as a safety tool because it also supplies criminal records.

    In addition to those records, the product — owned by the data broker red violet — also supplies a given individual’s address history; phone, vehicle and property records; bankruptcies; and liens and judgements, including foreclosure histories.

    Although such data could generally be gleaned from public records, Forewarn delivers it at the press of a button — a function real estate agents say allows them to gather publicly available information without having to visit courthouses and municipal offices, a process which would normally take days.