I am finding discrepancies with census tract info. Is it safe to use the FFIEC census tract info and move on, or do I also need to double check them? I have found errors from them as well. For example: they had a property listed in the neighboring county when in fact is was in this county. That county is in a MSA area, this county is not.... What are you others doing. (I was pulling info from FFIEC and making a copy for my records and the file and using what they have)

I had the same problem. I have been using FactFinder.cenus.gov for the ones I cant find on the FFIEC website's GEOcode. Most of the time I have been finding them there...but sometimes not at either place. If not, I just use GEOcode from FFIEC, click on the red dot and use what it gives me as the closest thing. That's just my opinion though

Thanks - I just figured, how can they site me if I am using their info - If they are wrong, that is their problem - It is their info. - I just want to make sure we are safe and don't have any violations because of this - Any others running into the same thing?

Kaytee, I would be careful with just clicking on the red dot. That gives you the center of the zip code, which in some cases is probably fine. You should move around the map until you locate the actual location of the property and click on that area to get the correct census tract.

12 - you are soooo right about that scenario!!!! I guess I should say that I do the "red dot" when I have truly exahusted all measures and then I do try and look at the area...but it is sometimes hard to determine. Most of the issues I look at are Adverse Action issues and do not have appraisals so there are times that I'm not 100% sure even where the property is really located, so if I can't find anything I just have to make a guess on it. If I do have the appraisal and can't find a census tract then I go by the appraisal.

Under the regulation it is your responsibility to insure you are reporting correct information. Simply because you got incorrect information from a 3rd party, regardless who that 3rd party is, does not relieve you of your regulatory responsibility.

We try to NEVER centroid a loan. I will bug the loan officer and people from the branches to death trying to figure where a property is located. You would be surprised who might know where a street or county road is that isn't on any maps. If we have loans that we cannot get an exact placement for it is usually because it is not in our assessment area and no one is familiar with it.

We have a large collection of county maps that we refer to on a regular basis. Some are in pretty bad shape. We also have been know to call the county or city/town and ask someone if they know where the property is located. What is really hard is when you have an address the post office doesn't even recognize.

How permissbale is centroiding in the cases you and third party simply cannot locate the census tract?

We have a small percentage every year that we just can't do any better than a centroid.

I found that if you go to superpages.com and then click on the people finder, you can usually find the address using the reverse lookup. I then compare their map with the FFIEC map and can usually find street addresses that will match the FFIEC. This is time consuming, but since it's not too many that I need to do it for, I'd rather be safe, than sorry.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work for purchases, and many mapping systems won't work for construction loans in newer subdivisions.

Regs, that would only work if the street has been mapped. Quite often the ones that won't geocode are new subdivisions or other new properties where the address is not yet in the system. There is also a problem with RRts. too.