BSI Launches National County Annual Report NCARD

22 January 2009, 10:30pm

An Open Records panel facilitated by Boundary Solutions, Inc. at the IAAO ’08 National Conference responded to a question posed by the IAAO conference committee:

“Does unconstrained sharing of digital cadastral databases stimulate the economy?” Based on 440 county annual report records, BSI reported that the average total property valuation of all residential and nonresidential parcels in an open record county (sharing their digital parcel map at <$250) grew substantially faster than the average closed record county from 2001 to 2006. These finding caused enough interest that IAAO requested that the panel proceedings be expanded into an article for IAAO’s organizational magazine, FAIR & Equitable.

To prepare for this article, BSI has expanded the above annual report records from 440 to 2,784 provided by the individual revenue departments of 46 states, nearly 100% of the total 3,140 USA county records. The result is the National County Annual Reports Database (NCARD).

In addition to population and CBSA designation, listed by record count, records include:

2,886 = Total Valuation all parcels each year 2001 - 2006 (46 different state revenue departments).

3,055 = Total Permits in each county Issued each year from 2001 to 2006

3,036 = Verified Data Availability/Readiness Ratings - (1) Open (Data Fee <$250) (2) Closed (Data Fee >$250) (3) No Map

2,784 = Total “FULL” Records, each contains tax base, permit, and verified Availability/Readiness.

GIS professionals and any student of urban analysis is encouraged to download the NCARD and see how it can be used to verify that open records does bump up tax base (transparency is self rewarding) and/or examine with greater confidence a wide range of county level economic trends and comparisons. Furthermore, BSI plans on expanding the database to include all counties and to update it to include 2007 and later as such annual report and permit activity data becomes available.

About Boundary Solutions Inc.

BSI is the custodian of the National Parcel Map Data Portal (NPDP™). As of October 2008, a total of 64 million parcels from 600 jurisdictions are normalized and ready for download. Regardless of source format, all content is subjected to over 30 software driven modifications and metric recordings to assure universal internal consistency highly convenient geoserver loading. NPDP™ content is available as downloads from the NPDP FTP Site or on a transaction basis using either ISC ParcelAtlas, r7 GeoRoom or Placebase Pushpin geoserver platforms. Boundary Solutions Inc. was awarded U.S. Patent 7,092,957, entitled “Computerized National Online Parcel-level Map Data Portal.” Claims include multi-state search to locate an address by displaying its corresponding digital parcel map boundary. The original provisional patent application filing date is January 18, 2002. Boundary Solutions, BSI, Boundary Solutions logo, National ParcelMap Data Portal, NPDP, and Rooftop Accuracy are trademarks of BSI. All other trademarks and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

National County Annual Reports Database

Geo: International