First American Data & Analytics’ CovenantGuard™ Solution Selected by Riverside County to Detect Restrictive Language in Historical Real Estate Records

First American Data & Analytics, a division of First American Financial Corporation (NYSE: FAF) and a leading national provider of property and ownership data and advanced analytic solutions, announced today that the County of Riverside Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder’s office has selected the company’s CovenantGuard™ solution to help identify and redact unlawful discriminatory restrictive covenants in county recorded real estate documents, a requirement under recently enacted California AB 1466.

California AB 1466 requires the county recorder of each California county to establish a restrictive covenant modification program to assist in the identification and redaction of unlawfully restrictive covenants in public land records. The law requires county recorders to develop an implementation plan by July 1, 2022, and to report on the progress of their restrictive covenant modification programs through 2025.

Commenting on the selection, County of Riverside Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Peter Aldana said, “Our office fully supports California’s effort to address discriminatory restrictive covenants. In anticipation of AB 1466 passing and becoming law, we sought to identify a vendor best positioned to offer a viable solution. That is why First American Data & Analytics was the natural choice. They are a recognized leader in real estate data extraction and have the experience and technology necessary to efficiently handle the review and modification work. We believe that collaborating with First American will enable us to meet every requirement of AB 1466, identifying and redacting discriminatory language in restrictive covenants from Riverside County’s official land records.”

The project with the County of Riverside Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder’s office is a public-private partnership designed to meet California AB 1466 requirements and demonstrate CovenantGuard’s ability to detect and help county recorders modify or redact documents containing discriminatory restrictive covenants. In addition to California, a number of other states currently have existing or pending legislation to address discriminatory restrictive covenants.

“We’re committed to supporting California’s effort to identify and redact unlawful discriminatory restrictive covenants in historical public land records and look forward to working with the County of Riverside on this important endeavor,” said Robert Karraa, president of First American Data & Analytics. “With our unrivaled data assets and patented data extraction technology, we’re uniquely positioned to help counties across the state and the country.”

CovenantGuard Powered by First American’s Industry-Leading Data Assets

First American maintains and curates the industry’s largest property and ownership dataset and a document repository that contains more than 7.5 billion digitized recorded documents nationwide, including more than 210 million recorded documents from California that span all 58 counties in the state. For counties in California and over 1,700 counties nationwide, First American’s dataset already contains a significant portion of the relevant recorded document images and collects new document images as frequently as daily.

The company also has the technology to rapidly scan additional historical digitized handwritten documents provided by county recorders that may pre-date the company’s stored document images and add them to CovenantGuard for examination. As a result, First American can search millions of recorded documents per day to identify unlawful discriminatory language. CovenantGuard is configurable to a county’s requirements, allowing county recorders to customize the search terms used to identify discriminatory restrictive covenants and establish the rules for redaction.

About First American Data & Analytics

First American Data & Analytics, a division of First American Financial Corporation, is a national provider of property-centric information, risk management and valuation solutions. First American maintains and curates the industry’s largest property and ownership dataset that includes more than 7.5 billion document images. Its major platforms and products include: DataTree^®, FraudGuard^®, RegsData^®, First American TaxSource^® and ACI^®. Find out more about how First American Data & Analytics powers the real estate, mortgage and title settlement services industries with advanced decisioning solutions at www.FirstAmDNA.com.

About First American

First American Financial Corporation (NYSE: FAF) is the premier provider of title, settlement and risk solutions for real estate transactions. With its combination of financial strength and stability built over 130 years, innovative proprietary technologies, and unmatched data assets, the company is leading the digital transformation of its industry. First American also provides data products to the title industry and other third parties; valuation products and services; mortgage subservicing; home warranty products; banking, trust and wealth management services; and other related products and services. With total revenue of $9.2 billion in 2021, the company offers its products and services directly and through its agents throughout the United States and abroad. In 2022, First American was named one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For by Great Place to Work^® and Fortune magazine for the seventh consecutive year. More information about the company can be found at www.firstam.com.

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