House Hunters

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But the influence of RealtyTrac goes beyond shaping public-policy responses like the one in Virginia. The company winds up having sway over the very concept of foreclosure rates. Early on, members of New York's task force thought the best way to look at foreclosure rates would be as a percentage of households with a mortgage. That was finally tossed in favor of RealtyTrac's measure of foreclosures as a percentage of all households. If the state reported its preferred figure, it would seem to have a greater problem than other states when people compared the two sets of data. "RealtyTrac is now setting the standard by which this information gets reported," says Neiman. "And it behooves us to work with that."

That might be a little scary from the outside, considering how much power resides in molding the way people think about an issue. But it's good news for a company in California trying to make a name for itself.