Imagine a world where every piece of property tells a story—where every plot of land, building permit, and insurance claim contributes to a dynamic narrative that evolves over time. In the first episode of Season 5 of Core Conversations, you are invited you to step beyond the ordinary view of properties as an amalgamation of square footage and floor plans to uncover the living, breathing essence of property.

Join host Maiclaire Bolton Smith and CoreLogic’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer John Rogers as they take you on a journey into the $45 trillion real estate market — America’s largest and most influential asset class. Discover how every event in a property’s lifecycle, from its beginning as raw land to construction and finally its role in society  — as well as everything in between like its vulnerabilities to climate risks — shapes its unique story.

But this isn’t just a story about data. It’s about the groundbreaking innovations, like AI and Climate Risk Analytics, that are empowering industries like real estate, insurance, and government to navigate an increasingly complex world. Listen to real-world examples of how technology is automating listings, helping reduce wildfire insurance premiums, and driving decisions that build resilience for the future.

In This Episode:

1:53 – What does it mean to have the full picture of a property, and why would someone need all that data?

7:17 – How can AI help someone see the full picture through all of the data that a single property (or a portfolio of properties) holds?

13:18 – What will it look like to be a housing industry professional as AI evolves into an everyday tool?

16:24 – How can high-quality climate data help the insurance industry in a market where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be profitable?

20:04 – Erika Stanley does the numbers in the housing market in The Sip.

21:15 – How can companies use climate resilience to ensure financial resilience?

27:29 – How will data increase resilience in the property industry going forward?

Up Next: What Will a Second Trump Presidency Mean for U.S. Housing?

Links:

• Explore CoreLogic Data
• Read CoreLogic Intelligence

Find full episodes with all our guests in our podcast archive here: https://clgx.co/3HFslXD5 Copyright 2025 CoreLogic

• Explore CoreLogic Data
• Read CoreLogic Intelligence

John Rogers:

At CoreLogic because we see a large aperture of the housing industry from land development, building development, real estate, world, mortgage insurance, government manufacturing, we are in a fortunate position where we can help across the housing life cycle to really measure and recommend climate resiliency to every single property.

Maiclaire Bolton Smith:

Welcome to Season 5 of Core Conversations: A CoreLogic Podcast where we tour the property market to investigate how economics, climate resiliency, governmental policy, and technology affect everyday life. I am your host Maiclaire Bolton Smith, and I'm just as curious as you are about everything that happens in our industry. To kick off the new year, we want to start by looking at what's really influencing change within the property industry and why. While the list of innovations is long today we'll be looking at the intersection of artificial intelligence, innovation and the financial benefits of incorporating resiliency into the industry. So let's just jump in and talk about how these areas interact and what we can expect in the coming months. So for this discussion, we have none other than our Chief Data and Analytics Officer, John Rogers. John, welcome back to Core Conversations.

JR:

Hello, Maiclaire, lovely to be back. I always look forward to these podcasts and listening to them throughout the year. So yeah, great to be back.

Erika Stanley:

Before we get too far into this episode, I wanted to remind our listeners that we want to help you keep pace with the property market. To make it easy, we curate the latest insight and analysis for you on our social media where you can find us using the handle at CoreLogic on Facebook and LinkedIn or at CoreLogic Inc. On X in Instagram. But now let's get back to Maiclaire and John.

MBS:

Well, I'm excited to kick off this new season with you. So okay, to get us started today, I want to talk about the full picture of property and everything that goes into it. So kind of like the anatomy of a property, and not that it has two bathrooms and three bedrooms in a kitchen and a living room and yada yada, but what are all the aspects that go into seeing that full picture,

JR:

That anatomy is a good analogy, Maiclaire. So at CoreLogic, we're gathering all the events on every single house to really get the full picture. Every property's a living, breathing entity. If you think through time it's either improving or degrading over time, and we literally capture the entire lifecycle from when the land's purchased, subdivided, when building permits are issued, when it's listed, when it's bought, any claims made in the house. And all those events provide really the best view of the property for everyone within the markets that we serve to analyze. So absolutely vital that we have the best view of the property.

MBS:

So I guess why would somebody need all of that data?

JR:

Very blunt answer. If you add up all the houses, it's worth $45 trillion. Just in the United States alone, our chief economist Selma Hep keeps a finger on the pulse in terms of the market values across all the different geographies in the United States. So with it being worth so much money, I think if you were running a portfolio of business, you would want the best data to make those financial decisions. Whether you're trying to grow your book of business with new leads, sell more products to the market, or indeed mitigate risk. I know we're talking about climate later on in the conversation, but you'd want the best data to make the best decisions on such a high value asset class.

MBS:

Sure, yeah. And I mean, it is the biggest asset class in our economy, which is just fascinating to see that we've got all this data, but that is really something that's unique to us at CoreLogic, right? It's not common for everyone to have all of this data altogether.

JR:

Exactly right. We're very fortunate, CoreLogic, for the last five, six years, we've built our 21st century data and analytics manufacturing plant on all things product and location data. It is fast evolving into an AI manufacturing plant, but really we service multiple industries, real estate, mortgage, insurance, government, retail, energy telcos. So if you think about what NASDAQ is to finance, what Nielsen is to media, really core Logic is the premier information services company for all things property and location. So we're a unique company in terms of that. We straddle so many different industries rather than just focusing on mortgage or just focusing on insurance as an example. Very important industries, but we're multi-industry focused.

MBS:

Yeah, no, it really is something that makes us at CoreLogic, I think so unique and so well, first exciting to be here, exciting to work here and work with all this data, but just interesting for those using it, how the different use cases that you could

Come up with with all the data that we have, and I guess ultimately it's used for decision making for whatever part of the property industry sector you may be in. But I guess when you think of how different are properties, I mean, every property's got a kitchen and bathrooms and bedrooms, and yes, some of them, like different parts of the country have different styles of homes that they use and different kinds of building coats that they build to, and obviously different values, so different sizes of homes. But when you just break it all down, how different really are two properties.

JR:

Even when we think through the scenario where you've got the same builder building the same house right beside each other even they will have differences. So

MBS:

Topology

JR:

Of land, distance to coast distance to electric pylon, these will all have implications in terms of the risk profile of that particular house. And I know you've probably seen some of the demonstrations that we've done with climate risk analytics where we literally zoom into one particular house in Fort Lauderdale and it's a greenhouse as in terms of low risk, but it's in amongst a sea of red houses, which are high risk due to climate in terms of due to hurricanes. The reason why that house is low risk is it's a new build built to code outside of flood femur zone, and hence it's much more resilient to the impacts of a major hurricane, and yet it's nearest neighbors right beside each other, a bright red because

MBS:

They're

JR:

Not of a similar stature unfortunately. But now we can measure that we can provide our clients and homeowners the tools to make their homes more resilient.

MBS:

Yeah, it's really interesting, and I mean we have talked a lot about the importance of good quality data and the property specific data because how it can really, especially from a hazard perspective, influence the risk that your home may be at. But ultimately, John, we want to talk about AI and innovation and technology today. And we're just talking about data and data is important, but chat GPT is ruling the world right now. How can AI help with all of this data that we've got?

JR:

Underwriting, insurance claims to even our shared services within CoreLogic from our technology organization using copilot for coding to our marketing groups to using, to set out collateral and plans. And even in our operations, we're using Gene AI to help on call centers. We're using AI under the leaf covers to improve data operations. So we are literally going after improvements in our data to the north point, not 1% improvement using AI under the covers because obviously we collect a huge amount of data. So it definitely helps, and we have a very strong governance group and processes around that so that we use it for good causes. So I appreciate there's always some bad actors I think advocate that can use it for not the right use case. So we're very passionate about making sure the correct monitoring is in place and understanding what we're doing across the groups.

MBS:

I guess let's think of the financial sector for a minute in a bank and if they wanted to look across their portfolio, what scale are we talking about? If let's just look at bank A, B, C, what scale of quantity of data might they have and how would they go about analyzing a vast quantity of data and potentially using AI to help them with that?

JR:

Yeah, and I think we're very fortunate. We service so many clients from a startup up to some of the biggest banks and insurers and companies in the world, which is a fantastic array of clients. With that said, I think fundamentally, first of all, as a company, we want to provide choice and options to our clients because that vast spectrum of clients will have different maturity in terms of how they can scale, how they deal with data.

So for CoreLogic, what we want to do is provide choice. So we literally can provide these insights and data really hooked into where the client is, so meet them in their world, so we can deliver to AWS, Google Databricks, snowflake, Salesforce, so into their operational process where they need the data typically in very large scaled companies. And we also offer the options where they can work in our environment. So we are, one of our big partners is Google, all of the vast majority of applications and products and solutions work in Google. So they can come into our environments all secure, compliant and work within what we call our workbench where they can access our data tools and compute and storage in a safe and compliant manner. So we really want to be able to provide those options. And then what unlocks all of this for our clients is something called Clip, which is our CoreLogic property identifier. So that this stick us

Two and a half years to build. It might sound easy on the face of it, about standardizing addresses, parcels and structures, but underneath it, it's actually a very complex geospatial challenge. And we've managed to solve it with obviously some of the best geospatial scientists in the world. But really it's the glue between, if I took the US 215 million addresses, which sit across 175 million structures with, think about commercial, residential, agricultural, which sit on 157 million parcels. So we glue the relationships between addresses, structures, and parcels. And just to let you know, we see about quarter of a million to half a million changes, whether it's a new address, a new structure, a parcel getting split per quarter. What does that all mean to the client? Well, we've just taken enormous amount of pain away from the client and they can just focus on the insight as in, I need to generate new leads on my book of business. I need to understand my market position. I need to understand the risk assessment against if a hurricane were to hit this area. It's all about speed to insight.

MBS:

Sure. And that technology can really help with that

JR:

100%. The AI technology obviously in the last two to three years has obviously been supercharged in the

MBS:

Last few years.

JR:

We're certainly riding that wave right now in core logic.

MBS:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've talked on this podcast before about AI redefining the property industry really, and I think I'd love your thoughts on that, but kind of combine too with, I mean you still hear about it for sure, but I know you go back to years gone by, you think, oh, technology's going to take over the world and people are going to lose their jobs because they're not going to need people anymore. We're have technology to do everything. And I think that there's still a bit of that if we think AI is taking over the world and are we still going to need the experts in the industry that we have now?

JR:

We definitely need property professionals. AI is not going to replace property professionals at CoreLogic. We're very passionate about using AI to make the property industry smarter, faster, and more people centric. And that last point is really important. I'll just give you a couple of examples. In the real estate world, we service over a million real estate agents throughout the United States, and right now we're using AI capabilities to automate the generation of a listing from images and voice that saves a real estate agent anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

MBS:

Oh, wow.

JR:

Which is fantastic. And I know it's early days and we are rolling it out, but that's really good because core logic is leaning in and trying to solve some pretty audacious goals and trying to make homes more resilient across the United States. So just amazing.

MBS:

Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about this climate. This is such a big topic right now, and it's one that's of interest to you and I a lot personally, but the insurance use case is a big one. We are seeing it harder to get insurance for insurance companies. It's harder for them to be profitable in their businesses, right? It's harder for them to write business knowing that the risk is continuously being elevated for a number of reasons. But when we look at the climate data specifically, and it's really important to have a high quality of data and a very fine resolution of data too. So can you just talk about that aspect of it a little bit?

JR:

We use the best ingredients? In other words, the best data and the best process to put together the best prediction that we think is possible. Those four ingredients. First, very quickly, all the property characteristics, we use over 200 attributes within the climate risk model from everything from material type of first floor, the topology of land, first floor height, and these characteristics, these attributes are used every day by one and a half million property professionals, whether you're a real estate agent, mortgage underwriter, insurance agent, these attributes have been tested over the last for several decades, similar to reconstruction costs in the insurance space. This is localized material costs, engineering equipment and labor. It's been using the insurance industry again for decades, tried and tested. We've got over 12 natural hazards, in other words like winter storms, wildfires, hurricanes, and so forth. And cle. In my new job as a chief data analytics officer, I've spent time with over 150 of our data scientists, meteorologists, climate scientists, and structural engineers.

MBS:

You're not alone.

ES:

MBS:

Okay. I do want to go back to, you mentioned the financial risk side of things, and I do want to focus on this risk finance side of things for a sec because last year we talked a lot on this podcast about the ruling that came down from the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which basically was making sure that publicly traded companies were preparing for what the future might look like when it comes to

JR:

Climate.

MBS:

So I guess where we are now, what do you think are companies prepared for a, if they do need to start reporting, but just in general, are companies going to be prepared from a risk finance perspective?

JR:

Simple answer, yes. I think it is disappointing what's happening with the SEC rulings, but if I put that to the side, both sides of the aisle agree that we need to protect the biggest asset class of $45 trillion. And the business case makes sense. So for every $1 invested in a property's resiliency is about equivalent to $6. If the weather event, the natural hazard event were to occur and we had to recover the home,

ES:

Visualize what resiliency looks like, CoreLogic's data and location intelligence powers projects to help you confidently meet the property industry's biggest challenges to create a more resilient and prosperous future. Learn more@corelogic.com.

JR:

Indeed, that ratio actually increases from $1 to every $13 if you include

MBS:

More

JR:

Of the macroeconomics effects to that area. So

MBS:

Businesses

JR:

Affected, businesses leaving jobs, losses, population movement. There's a fascinating study put together by the US Chamber of Commerce and All State recently, which highlighted many areas and 10 years worth of research, which really cemented those ratios. And we see similar ratios on the ground as I think within the insurance industry. We recovered and restored about 2 million homes last year, which is amazing.

MBS:

Yeah, no, it's great to see. And I mean one thing it echoes around the communities that we play in is that the hazard is inevitable, but the disaster doesn't have to be. And that really comes down to the impact of mitigation, the impact of preparedness and being more resilient to be able to recover from something faster and with less impact that it may have had previously. And it's amazing to see those two examples of how the world is paying attention and things that you can do the industry can do to help lessen the impact of these hazards.

JR:

Totally agree. Cle, there's so many green shoots in the United States, I always appreciate if it sometimes feels it is never enough. But there's at core, because we see a large aperture of the housing industry from land development, building development, real estate world, mortgage insurance, government manufacturing, we are in a fortune position where we can help across the housing life cycle

MBS:

To

JR:

Really measure and recommend climate resiliency to every single property. I'm just very excited to further lean in and make sure we protect everyone's homes in that 45 trillion asset class. So I think we're in a fortunate position where we can help many, many areas of this housing development and lifecycle.

MBS:

Yeah, I agree with you. I know one of the things that we say here too is with all the data we have, it's all about protecting the lives beyond the buildings. And that's ultimately

JR:

Perfectly said,

MBS:

JR:

I think there's going to be an increase in the measurement and availability of these types of insights, whether it is to all the housing industry participants that we discussed, from your builders to your insurers. And also, again, what we're fortunate core lot because of our network effect and all the B2B companies, we work with the opportunity to educate the 330 million US citizens within the United States. It's a real big opportunity for us to work that network to get to all homeowners so that we educate them better on how we can make a home more resilient. And also as important is to lower their energy bills in terms of becoming more energy efficient. So I think we're at the starting point of that education journey to all homeowners and just very excited to have that opportunity within CoreLogic.

MBS:

Well, excited to see where the future takes us. So John, as always, it has been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me today on core conversations of CoreLogic podcast.

JR:

Thank you so much.

MBS:

Alright. And you will be back again. I know. So thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed our latest episode. Please remember to leave us a review and let us know your thoughts and subscribe wherever you get your to be notified when new episodes are released. And thanks to the team for helping bring this podcast to life producer Jessi Devenyns, editor and sound engineer Romie Aromin, our Facts Guru, Erika Stanley and social media duo, Sarah Buck and Makaila Brooks. Tune in next time for another Core Conversation.

ES:

You still there? Well, thanks for sticking around. Are you curious to know a little bit more about our guest today? John Rogers is CoreLogic's Chief Data and Analytics officer and oversee research and development for the company, whether it's driving new solutions that understand the impacts on the real estate economy due to climate risk, or its building groundbreaking models that identify suitable land for affordable housing development. The r and d group tackles major housing issues and works with many clients across the housing industry to drive growth and mitigate risk on their book of business.