Innovating and Responding
to Customer Needs:
The Residential Finance Survey
by Mary B. Schwartz and Robert J. Schneider,
Jr.
"We constantly strive
to improve our survey methods and techniques to ensure the
accuracy and reliability of our data. Examining the potential
for electronic Residential Finance Survey questionnaires
is another significant way in which we anticipate and attempt
to satisfy your needs."
-- Branch Chief Peter J. Fronczek,
Chief, U.S. Census Bureau
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Fact-finding is one of America's oldest
activities. In a country of 118 million housing units and 275 million
people, providing timely, relevant, and quality national data is
often a monumental task. At the U.S. Census Bureau, we conduct the
Residential Finance Survey (RFS) the year after each decennial census.
You may have already participated in
this survey at one time or another, considering that weve
been doing it since 1950. The reason we conduct the RFS is to collect
and produce data about the acquisition and financing of non-farm,
privately-owned residential properties. Our survey data are used
by several sources. For instance, researchers and policymakers use
the data to design policies that ensure a sound residential finance
and delivery system. Real estate and mortgage finance businesses
use the data to gauge and improve their competitiveness. "Many
large banks used the 1991 RFS data to determine the degree of their
future involvement with home equity loans," according to Peter
J. Fronczek, Chief, Financial and Market Characteristics Branch
(F&MCB) of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics (HHES)
Division, U.S. Census Bureau.
We have designed the Residential Finance
Survey as a two-stage survey. In the first phase, we ask owners
of sampled residential properties how they acquired their properties,
whether they have mortgages on their properties, and how they would
describe the properties. If the properties are mortgaged, we ask
the property owners to identify their mortgage lender(s). In the
"lender phase," we follow up with the lenders to verify
technical information, which the owners are not likely--or even
required--to have.
Industry Changes Necessitate Changes
to Lender Survey
During the 1980s, the financial services
industry landscape changed. Large multinational lenders replaced
smaller lending institutions. As a result, in the last (1991) RFS,
larger lenders were inundated by many eight-page paper questionnaires,
which they were required to complete in a short time. Given the
changes in the industry, we began actively investigating how some
emerging technologies could be applied to reduce the burden on large
lenders and to increase the efficiency of the survey. Fronczek,
who is directing the 2001 RFS, identified one of the primary objectives
for the survey as "making the task of responding as simple
and practical as possible for lenders."
To achieve this, the Financial and
Market Characteristics Branch of the Housing and Household Economic
Statistics (HHES) Division, which coordinates the survey, initiated
a series of meetings with members of our Computer Assisted Survey
Research Office. They explained that diskette Computer Self-Administered
Questionnaires (CSAQs) were already being used for many company
surveys. A CSAQ diskette enables a company to easily report similar
information on each of its establishments. For example, a company
could report information on payroll, revenue, and number of employees
for each of its establishments in one CSAQ by importing the data
from their databases rather than keying it. Companies would also
be spared the burden of sorting through questions to determine their
applicability, because the CSAQ would automatically skip questions
that did not apply. In addition, automatic calculations remove the
burden of lender calculations. Furthermore, computer programs resolve
data discrepancies during lender reporting, which eliminates the
need for telephone follow-up.
This piqued our interest in using a
CSAQ to make it easier for participating mortgage lenders to report
relevant information common to each of their mortgages, such as:
- beginning
and outstanding principal balances
- interest
rates
- principal
and interest payments
- insurance
payments
- real
estate taxes
We quickly
decided against the option to administer a Web-based CSAQ, because
other survey results showed that many people are still understandably
concerned about the security risk of sending sensitive data over
the Internet. Although our RFS
web site cannot be used for actual reporting, we update it quarterly
to provide current detailed information about the RFS.
What May Be Economical for Some
May Be Uneconomical for Us
We reviewed this technology and--much
to our dismay--determined that the development costs of a CSAQ for
the RFS were too high. If the RFS were an ongoing survey, the development
costs could be amortized over time. However, because the RFS is
taken only once every ten years, the fixed costs were excessive.
"None of this really mattered, because we didnt have
enough time to properly develop and test a CSAQ before the RFS goes
to the field. So, the CSAQ turned out to be an unrealistic option
for us all the way around," Fronczek added.
Alternatives We Are Investigating
We have not, however, entirely abandoned
the option for lenders to report electronically in the 2001 RFS.
In a presurvey, we will ask large lending institutions if they prefer
to "provide a computer file of mortgage information in a format
suggested by the Census Bureau," assuming that any of the properties
on which they hold mortgage(s) fall into the RFS property sample.
To meet the anticipated demand for an electronic survey, we are
consulting with staff in various areas throughout the Bureau to
learn from their experiences. For example, we are talking to staff
working on Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) industry surveys
to determine if their methods in the five-year census of companies
in FIRE industries can be applied to our RFS lender survey. "We
are interested in, and aggressively investigating, similar survey
methodologies that other Bureau divisions have successfully employed,"
said Fronczek.
Commitment to Our Customers
Census Bureau employees proudly help
to carry out the Bureaus mission by being innovative in their
work and responsive to our customers. "We constantly strive
to improve our survey methods and techniques to ensure the accuracy
and reliability of our data. Examining the potential for electronic
RFS questionnaires is another significant way in which we anticipate
and attempt to satisfy your needs," Fronczek added. Through
continuous communication with you, our customers, we are able to
achieve these goals.
About the
Authors
Robert J. Schneider, Jr.
is a Marketing Specialist, at the U.S. Census Bureau in Suitland,
MD. You may reach him at (301) 457-4081 or Robert.J.Schneider.Jr@ccmail.census.gov
Mary
B. Schwartz is in the Housing and Household Economic Statistics
(HHES) Division of the Census Bureau. You may reach her at (301)
457-3190 or mary.b.schwartz@ccmail.census.gov.
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