Insight Data Solutions: Remapping datasets to determine property values

Insight Data Solutions’ Co-Founders, Louie Psaroulis and Mike Thanos, know that you’re fascinated with property. Between the two of them, they’ve got over 50 years’ worth of experience in the valuation and mortgage industry. They are now using that expertise to power the next generation of property valuation solutions.

By combining unparalleled accuracy and speed embedded within their technology, Mike and Louie are taking their services across borders, with Mike situated in the Melbourne hub and Louie working out of Stone & Chalk Sydney. Working from two of three Stone & Chalk hubs allows IDS to gain a national perspective on the property market.

“We’re not only helping people buy into the market, but we’re also helping them understand where they’re sitting with the biggest investment they’ll probably ever have,” adds Mike.

“It’s a massive asset and people want to be well informed; they want to know they’ve got the right price and that the property is growing.”

“If you look at the housing cycle itself, you’ll find that it always initially goes up then slightly down. Then it plateaus before eventually rising again. We’re just going through that curve. We don’t know when it will bottom, as that is still not evident, but a lot of that is going to be dependent on a bank’s lending criteria, interest rate affordability, as well as low unemployment,” says Louie.

Already benchmarked by three of the major banks, IDS’ property estimation model is transforming traditional experiences by innovating how data is used to determine property values.

IDS’ goal is to build the most trusted estimate model in the country and then apply it nationally. What makes their product innovative is the ability to be constantly configurable, which includes building a framework from the ground up in order to house and utilise large amounts of data.

Traditionally, frameworks within the property market have relied heavily on the functionality of platforms in order to derive information.

“But a model is different,” explains Louie. “Normally you take a pre-existing model and squeeze it to fit your purposes, but that has problems in itself. Rather than us pulling an existing model apart to fit the data that we have, we prefer to build it.”

Mike adds, “Sometimes someone’s property might be very unique, so we allow them to give us feedback. We allow them to change the attributes and then we re-estimate.”

“There’s a sense of interaction and collaborative communication which is absent in other providers.”

“The great thing about IDS is that the more we acquire data the more we can expand our model. We think our consumers know best, including the intimate details about their property. This is a way to empower them too.”

That empowerment makes IDS’ model transparent and consumer-friendly, because the model itself holds no restrictions on the type of information being collected.

Mike and Louie are both proud that IDS has partnered with various start-ups at Australasia’s leading innovation hub, Stone & Chalk, which now spans across three different locations including recently announced Lot Fourteen in Adelaide.

“We power about six or seven clients all using our model in different capacities and for different reasons,” says Mike.

One of those partnerships include working with Stone & Chalk alumni (resident at time of writing), Data Republic, in powering a lot of IDS’ initial datasets.

IDS’ participation in the FUELED Accelerator Program in 2018 has also provided the opportunity to showcase their product to Westpac, which has led to three of the major banks benchmarking the model for further collaboration in 2019.

“You can teach an old dog new tricks!” remarks Louie. “It’s been really exciting to learn new things, and Stone & Chalk has taken me on that journey and shown me different ways to tackle issues.”

Mike agrees. “Stone & Chalk Melbourne is my home. The Stone & Chalk team has been very responsive. Overall, it’s been a great experience.”

To learn more about Insight Data Solutions and how they can help you and your property, contact them here.

6 August 2019