Final County Data Record Project OMB PartA

County Data

Record Project

Task Order
C-CHI-01072/CHI-T0001

OMB Paperwork Reduction Act Submission for

County and State Parcel Data Collection

Part A: Justification

December 27, 2010

Prepared for

Ashaki Robinson Johns, M.S.W.

Office of Policy Development and Research

US Department of Housing and Urban Development

451 7th St. SW, Suite 8120

Washington, DC 20410

Prepared by

Saty Patrabansh

Lauren Dunton

Abt Associates Inc.

55 Wheeler Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

T able of Contents

Part A: Justification 1

A1 Circumstances That Make the Collection of Information Necessary 1

A2 How and by Whom the Data Will Be Used 2

A2.1 Project Overview 2

A2.2 Purpose of the Data Collection 2

A2.3 Who Will Use the Information 2

A2.4 Instrument Item-by-Item Justification 2

A3 Use of Improved Technologies 3

A4 Efforts to Avoid Duplication 4

A5 Involvement of Small Entities 4

A6 Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection 4

A7 Special Circumstances 4

A8 Consultations Outside the Agency 4

A9 Payments to Respondents 5

A10 Arrangements and Assurances Regarding Confidentiality 5

A11 Sensitive Questions 5

A12 Estimate of Annualized Burden Hours 5

A13 Estimated Record Keeping and Reporting Cost Burden on Respondents 6

A14 Estimated Cost to the Federal Government 6

A15 Reasons for Changes in Burden 6

A16 Tabulation Plan, Statistical Analysis, and Study Schedule 6

A17 Expiration Date Display Exemption 6

A18 Exceptions to Certification 7

Appendix: Federal Register Notice A-1

Part A: Justification

A1 Circumstances That Make the Collection of Information Necessary

This request is for the clearance of parcel data collection from 127 pre-selected counties and 27 corresponding states to construct a standardized parcel database for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The main objective of the project is to provide HUD with reliable and currently collected information on housing market and neighborhood conditions in counties and states identified by HUD as recipient of HUD funding so that HUD can perform three types of activities. First, this database will give HUD an ability to track home sales, foreclosures and tax assessments and also respond efficiently to economic and natural disasters that may occur in the near future. Second, the information collected by this project is intended to support future evaluations of HUD programs such as the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), the HOME Investment Partnership Program, and the Disaster Recovery Assistance program. Third, the process of data collection will be used to assess the feasibility of constructing an ongoing parcel database that could be extended to have a national coverage and also be available to the public as aggregates by geography.

Information about a community’s housing stock such as home sales, foreclosures and tax assessments can help gauge the level of neighborhood distress, identify the underlying causes of the distress, and inform the development of appropriate policy responses. This information could also be used to evaluate any program that is designed to stabilize communities suffering from foreclosures, abandonment, lack of affordable housing, or natural disasters; this will potentially increase the efficiency of future data collection requests and, therefore, reduce future burdens..

The activity of this project is to contact and collect parcel data from the 127 counties and 27 corresponding states. The project will draw upon the state repository (e.g., a state’s Department of Revenue) and the county assessor’s office as the primary sources. The types of county data sources could vary by state and within a state. The project plan is to approach one data source for each state and up to three data sources for each county.

There are five general types of county data sources that we plan to approach:

• Tax assessment system;

• Tax billing system;

• Real estate record system;

• Address management system; and

• Geographic information system.

After data collection, the data obtained from each county and state will be standardized to create a standardized parcel database which will be used to assess the feasibility of future collection activity in addition to the single data collection requested in this OMB submission

This OMB submission only addresses the parcel data that will be collected from the 127 counties and 27 corresponding states.

A2 How and by Whom the Data Will Be Used

A2.1 Project Overview

The County Data Record Project will acquire, assemble, standardize and summarize parcel data from 127 countries and 27 corresponding states that have received HUD funding. Parcel data is geographically referenced information about the ownership, rights and interests of land parcels and HUD is specifically interested in parcel data related to tax assessment, property sale, easement, lien, land use and condition.

The objectives of the project are to:

• Create a standardized database that can be used by HUD; and

• Assess the feasibility of future collection activities.

A2.2 Purpose of the Data Collection

The goal of the data collection phase is to collect the desired parcel attributes that are available in electronic format from 127 counties and the 27 corresponding states as well as the requisite documentation to understand and standardize the data.

A2.3 Who Will Use the Information

The parcel data that is collected and compiled into a standardized database will be used for two main purposes. First, this database will be used to track home sales, foreclosures and tax assessments and also respond efficiently to economic and natural disasters that may occur in the near future. Second, this database is intended to support future evaluations of HUD programs such as the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), the HOME Investment Partnership Program, and the Disaster Recovery Assistance program.

A2.4 Instrument Item-by-Item Justification

Exhibits 1 presents the data fields to be collected from counties and states. The project will only obtain these fields if they are already maintained by counties and states electronically. These data fields cover location, description, condition, valuation and liens of the properties and are necessary parcel attributes to track home sales, foreclosures and tax assessments for HUD’s purposes. Specifically, the data elements about the location will be useful for identifying and mapping parcels. The data elements pertaining to the description and condition of the properties will provide HUD with an understanding of the current stock of housing. Finally, the data elements related to the condition, valuation and liens of the properties will enable HUD to identify and address future economic and natural disasters.

Exhibit 1: Item-by-Item Justification – Parcel Data
Attribute Name	Description
Parcel ID	Parcel identifier
Site Address	Address of the parcel location
Owner Type	Indicator that property is owner-occupied or rental
Structure Type	Type of structure, e.g., manufactured, single-family, condominium etc.
Assessed Value	Assessed value of property taxed by the state
Assessment Date	Date property was assessed
Assessment Timeframe	Frequency of assessment, e.g., annual, biennial etc.
Sales Price	Value of sale
Sales Date	Year of sales transaction
Area of Lot	Lot size
Area of Structure	Square footage of living area
Land Use Code	Description of how the parcel is used
Easements	Current easements of the property
Conditions of Property	Current condition of the property
Multifamily Unit	Structure will with more than four units
Liens	All liens on the property including tax delinquency liens
Parcel ID Year	Year associated with the parcel identifier
Subdivision/ Neighborhood	Subdivision of neighborhood of the property
Sales Type	Type of sale (e.g., arms length, foreclosure, deed in lieu etc.)
Structure Area Units	Units of structure area (e.g., square footage etc.)
Condition Year	Year associated with condition of property
Year Built	Year property was built
Shape File	Graphic data that can be used to create maps

A3 Use of Improved Technologies

The parcel data will be collected by three methods, in the order of the county’s preference: 1) download website links, 2) pre-packaged data sets, 3) and queried data. Wherever counties and states maintain website from where data can be downloaded, the project will use this resource. Many counties routinely package data from commercial vendors and other consumers of parcel data and the project will obtain pre-packaged data via secure FTP links whenever download website links are not available. For counties and states that do have data download websites or pre-packaged data sets, the project will request that they extract their data using a query language such as SQL.

A4 Efforts to Avoid Duplication

The download website links and pre-packaged datasets will be used to avoid duplication of effort.

A5 Involvement of Small Entities

No small businesses or other small entities are involved as respondents in the proposed data collection effort. Respondents to this data collection are county and state government entities. Efforts have been made to minimize response burden on respondents by the use of technology. All data collection is voluntary.

A6 Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

Not applicable. This is a one-time data collection effort.

A7 Special Circumstances

The proposed data collection activities are consistent with the guidelines set forth in 5 CFR 1320.6 (Controlling Paperwork Burden on the Public—General Information Collection Guidelines). There are no special circumstances that require deviation from these guidelines.

A8 Consultations Outside the Agency

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, HUD published on December 8, 2010 a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of data collection activities for the County Data Record Project. The notice provided a 60-day period for public comments. The Federal Register Notice is included as an appendix.

HUD’s contractor, Abt Associates, developed the list of data fields to be collected in consultation after preliminary selections by the staff from HUD. Representatives of HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research reviewed this list.

A9 Payments to Respondents

Counties and states will be paid administrative fees that they charge for providing their parcel data.

A10 Arrangements and Assurances Regarding Confidentiality

The data will be transferred via a secure FTP server and stored in a secure environment. Only project staff will have access to the data. Once the data is delivered to HUD, Abt Associates will remove the data from storage.

A11 Sensitive Questions

The data fields to be collected do not include sensitive items.

A12 Estimate of Annualized Burden Hours

Exhibit 2 provides information on the data collection from counties and states and the estimated time to complete this task. The total burden for data collection for the study is estimated at 112.4 hours.

For each of the 127 counties, an average of two departments will be contacted. At each department, two staff members will be contacted by phone. The first will be the official who has the authority to approve data transfer and the second will be the technical staff who can transfer the data. Each phone call is expected to last 12 minutes on average.

For each of the 27 states, two staff members will be contacted by phone at only one department. The first will be the official who has the authority to approve data transfer and the second will be the technical staff who can transfer the data. Each phone call is expected to last 12 minutes on average.

Therefore the total burden is 112.4 hours for the 127 counties and 27 corresponding states.

Exhibit 2: Estimate of Burden Hours
Respondents	Number of Respondents	Number responses per respondent	Average burden/ response (in hours)	Total burden hours
County Government Officials	127	4	0.2	101.6 hours
State Government Officials	27	2	0.2	10.8 hours
Total	154	NA	NA	112.4 hours

A13 Estimated Record Keeping and Reporting Cost Burden on Respondents

Aside from the cost implications of the time burden, there is no additional cost burden on respondents. To the contrary, the project will pay nominal administrative fees charged by the counties and states for the transfer of data when required by the county or state. Apart from these administrative fees for processing simple data query and/or pushing data through a secure FTP server and the time required to talk on the phone to the project staff members, there is no additional record-keeping and reporting cost burden on the respondents.

A14 Estimated Cost to the Federal Government

The total contracted cost to the federal government for the collection of county and state level parcel data is $273,347. This includes $114,129 in labor and $131,584 in direct costs.

A15 Reasons for Changes in Burden

This submission to OMB is a new request for approval; there is no change in burden.

A16 Tabulation Plan, Statistical Analysis, and Study Schedule

Data collection is scheduled to begin in April 2011 assuming 16-week OMB review period. The county and state data collection period will run eight weeks, through May 20, 2011. The data collection will be conducted by the project staff members who will contact the counties and states and compile a database of parcel data for analysis purposes.

Data standardization of the parcel data will begin following completion of the data collection period in May, 2011. A draft of the feasibility report will be completed on August 1, 2011 with a final report submitted on September 12, 2011. The final parcel data and documentation also will be submitted the following week on September 12, 2011.

The project will not tabulate the data other than simple descriptions for the data documentation. The project will not conduct any statistical analysis.

A17 Expiration Date Display Exemption

The HUD letter requesting the data elements will prominently display the expiration date for OMB approval.

A18 Exceptions to Certification

This submission describing data collection requests no exceptions to the Certificate for Paperwork Reduction Act (5 CFR 1320.9).

Appendix: Federal Register Notice

Abt Associates Inc. Table of Contents 2