RealEC Documents Cost Savings.

Chalking up a reported 290% increase in volume in less than six months, the RealEC Exchange processed a million orders between November 2002 and January 2003.

According to the announcement, the RealEC Exchange e-commerce platform now averages 380,000 real estate orders per month, resulting in more than 1.5 million related vendor transactions each month.

By way of contrast, back in October 2002 RealEC announced that it tallied 1.2 million real estate orders for the entire first nine months of that year, an average of some 133,000 orders per month.

Additionally, said RealEC president Jeff Sanderson, February 2003 marks the eighth straight month in which the company's revenue exceeded expenses. "RealEC continues to be profitable," he said. "This has allowed us to invest additional money into our core exchange while, at the same time, expanding our technology toolbox, which enables mortgage lenders to be more cost effective."

Among the products in that toolbox is RealEC's iSelect, used to automate selection of settlement products and prices. "What we are doing with iSelect," said Mr. Sanderson, "is automating the decision process by taking the lender's business rules, including rules provided by the GSEs, and capturing those in a data format with an XML-based rules set to automate product selection."

He said iSelect also "data-izes" the service level agreement (SLA) between the lender and the provider to make sure the order is placed with the appropriate provider. "For example," he explained, "if a lender has an SLA dictating that I will send you 25% of my orders in California, iSelect will verify that they are in fact sending that specified 25%."

A major part of RealEC's value proposition is that it helps lenders reduce costs, he said. He noted that a recent third- party report done for RealEC showed that "just in labor savings on the settlement side, the ability to have an electronic platform directly to settle services saves on average $86 per closing, and an average $198 per transaction for settlement services as a whole."