Maps No One Wants You To See

"I don't care if you publish this or email it to everyone you know. I mean I gave this story a year of my life and I didn't do it because I thought it wasn't interesting." Pete Smith December, 2008

Maps no one wants you to see
Access to taxpayer-financed data may diminish as copying costs rise.

Counties throughout Missouri are moving away from hand-drawn maps coupled with thick books of property records and beginning to store property information in powerful databases.

These Geographic Information Systems are commonly harnessed by developers, engineers and a slew of other businesses to derive profits. Yet this information is often inaccessible to the common citizen even though it's funded with taxpayer money.

Although state officials see this information as something that should be free and accessible – one of the compelling reasons to switch to GIS was cost efficiency – local officials tend to guard the data like a hot commodity.

Governments began converting property data and maps into digital format to save time and money. GIS technology makes creating digital maps 10-100 times faster than creating a map by hand-scribing, estimated Kari Craun of the United States Geological Survey.

Craun is chief of the USGS's Central Region NSDI Partnership Office in Rolla and has witnessed the transition from analog to digital mapping techniques for the past 20 years working with GIS in Missouri.

"GIS has definitely been a benefit because we can provide information to a lot more people a lot more quickly," Craun said. "Ultimately, yes, it has saved money."

Still many county administrators continue to view it as an extra expense.

And as GIS datasets are collected over time they can also yield powerful analyses in terms of changes in property tax assessments and appraisals that realtors, developers or the average homebuyer may find invaluable.

But invaluable is just a word. And counties throughout the state are testing the waters to be able to put a more concrete number on their worth and try and create additional funding from their sale.

Currently the price range for one year of a county's GIS property data can start at $30 in the case of St. Louis County and top out at about $20,300 for Jackson County, which encompasses Kansas City.

Putting the data to good use

Most counties that collect data in GIS format provide a rudimentary internet search engine so that anyone can access information about the ownership of a specific piece of land.

When Springfield developer Bob Fitzgerald was first imagining where his Cobblestone Creek subdivision could be located, he began his search on the Greene County assessor's web site.

Bob Fitzgerald, of Fitzgerald First Realty uses GIS data from local governments to make maps that help him develop property.

Fitzgerald is the owner of Fitzgerald First Realty. With over 12 years of first hand experience in the Springfield real estate market, he had a good idea of where he wanted to build his new subdivision. He even had the owner's name of the piece of property he liked.

But when he queried the assessor's online GIS database, his results showed that no map could be found to show information about the property.

To avoid delays such as this, Fitzgerald subscribes to an FTP site run by Greene County where his business can download the raw GIS data known as shapefiles.

FTP sites exist so that any person can download any computer file hosted on the site whenever they need it without the need to request the file from anyone.

With the shapefiles available whenever he needs them, Fitzgerald can then load it into a program called ArcMap for the more in-depth analysis he needs.

The government data quickly shows the locations of sewer lines, utilities, property boundaries, sinkholes and elevation contour lines essential for managing water runoff and creating a profitable housing development.

More importantly, Fitzgerald can join outside datasets to the government data for further analysis.

Mapping property sale prices is one example of how developers commonly merge government data with privately maintained data.

Like any Realtor, Fitzgerald has access to the Multiple Listing Service, which records housing sales prices, information not available through county assessors. With the valuable sale prices from the MLS, plus the GIS files, Fitzgerald could then map not just the last sale price of the property he wanted, but the last sale price of all the surrounding properties.

It's the kind of analysis that no county web site can provide. And it can do more than just shape Fitzgerald's profits, the data also shapes the look and design of the subdivisions he builds.

Without it, his company would have to pay for an expensive topographic survey to determine drainage and then waste valuable time trying to find utility information from various government bodies before he could even think about developing the land.

"It's good information to have when you're looking at a property to develop," Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said the GIS data has definitely given his business a leg up over the competition in the 6 years he has been using it and that the data pays for itself after one development.

"It's getting harder and harder to find a piece of property of any size that can easily be developed," Fitzgerald said. "This helps us know whether it's economically feasible."

Data's use extends beyond development

The Greater Springfield Board of Realtors also collects the county's data and uses it in an internal mapping application board president Scott Rose said.

The data can help realtors plot out listings and show how close schools, police stations and fire stations are to the property. A thorough analysis of tax records and school info is also critical to
realtors in setting the price of any property.

Former County commissioner Jim Payne was instrumental in converting the existing government data into new GIS databases in the late 1990s. Payne was also involved the Greene County real estate industry for over thirty years and he knows how important the information is to anyone trying to buy or sell real estate.

"It's invaluable," Payne said. "Realtors have to be using this information if they're doing their job right."

GIS is an essential technology for anyone involved in high growth areas, national GIS expert Lisa Derenthal said. Derenthal, now with Gimmal Group, has 25 years experience using GIS that included time at one of the nation's largest homebuilders, Centex Homes.

GIS technology originated in government planning, Derenthal said. Eventually the real estate industry finally began leveraging the data after years of outsourcing the work to engineering firms.

From the development aspect, in an undersupplied market, the data is used to show current ownership, acreage, school boundaries, value and how those values have increased over time.

In an oversupplied market, the marketing department would use it to map where buyers and leads were coming from and then target direct mail in those specific areas.

"In better times and markets, developers were willing to go out and purchase the data because the value of finding the right tract of land was so valuable," Derenthal said.

It's not just realtors combing the web for data. Almost every recent home buyer has done internet research on the market and properties they are interested in.

"Google earth has driven an awareness of what is possible in the general population and demand for that information will only continue to grow," Derenthal said.

Rose warned that market snapshots collected from internet data are often times wrong or misleading. But that doesn't mean the Board of Realtors will bend over backwards to correct all those errors than stem from the so-called snapshots.

"We don't release information from our web site," Rose said. "A lot of clients wouldn't want people to know what they sold their house for or what they paid for it."

Or, as Derenthal said, "Realtors don't want you to know too much."

Access to housing data is often out of reach to government agencies as well as the public.

Because Missouri doesn't require the disclosure of home sales prices, property appraisals by local assessors often have little grounding in reality and instead rely the subjective judgement of local assessors.

How price affects access

A map of counties using GIS technology for storing and analyzing land records shows that its use directly correlates to population density and real estate activity.

Forty percent of the 115 counties in Missouri currently use GIS and an estimated sixty four percent will have it in the next year. Of that percentage, ten counties refused to provide the News-Leader with copies of the data at any price.


"The GIS statute is a terribly written law," James Klahr of the attorney general's office said of the law that governs how the information is to be shared.

If the varying prices and differences in access to the data don't illustrate the inconsistency written into the statute, then the sharp contrast between how state government and county governments interpret the law is blinding.

The state of Missouri's policy in regards to GIS data is to post every file that doesn't violate privacy or security to the state-run Missouri Spatial Data Information Service web site so that any person can download it at anytime for free said State Geographic Information Officer Tim Haithcoat.

"In many cases the law needs to come up to speed on how to interpret data sharing," said Haithcoat.

Right now the state is in the midst of discussing GIS data sharing policy and should have an answer by early next spring.

"I would come down on the side of sharing everything we can," said Haithcoat.

Even then, a state policy could not mandate a change in the practices of county government.

So what then is to stop a county such as Greene from next year charging $20,300 for its GIS data like Jackson County does?

Greene County spokeswoman Jenny Filmer Edwards said the question is leading and declined to answer.

According to documents from the county assessor's office and developers such as Fitzgerald, Greene County provides access to the shapefiles via a subscription FTP site on the county's web site.

When the News-Leader asked Edwards and Information Services Director Jason Kerr why the county charged the public anything to access the FTP site, Kerr denied that the files were available online. He appeared surprised to discover such an FTP even existed when the News-Leader guided him to the site on his own computer.

The pay-for-access FTP site is available under the "public information" section of Greene County's web site.

"Government ought to be providing data in the most expedient and cheapest way," said Charles Davis, a University of Missouri professor and co-author of a 2002 paper on public access to GIS data. "Instead, they do it in the most expensive way. It's illogical," said Davis.