About Urbics

Timely reporting, quickly delivered.Urbics reports are available soon after the source data is provided by the county assessor and tax collector - no lengthy waits for statutory filings that may be a year away. And since Urbics reports are available on demand through any browser, you can view or download the information you need on the spot. The metrics in Urbics are the same used in most official statements and continuing disclosures making our reporting consistent with existing information.

Comprehensive coverage.Urbics is designed around property tax jurisdictions - cities, schools, special assessment districts, hospital districts, water districts and many other types of taxing entities. Unlike demographic or real estate services using zip code or census tract boundaries, the boundaries of these jurisdictions are defined by the state and counties using tax codings and parcel numbers - the same way they are defined for bond issues and local property tax allocations. In addition to counties, cities, community colleges and school districts, our 30,000-plus jurisdictions include Mello-Roos community facilities districts, assessment districts and landscape and lighting districts as well as special districts such as hospital districts, community service districts, water districts, redevelopment project areas and more. Urbics provides subscribers with additional tools to track your areas in a portfolio and to create new areas where one doesn't yet exist - such as for a new bond issue that consolidates several existing taxing districts. You can learn more about how areas are defined in Urbics here.

Reliable reporting for over twenty years.Urbics grew out of independent analytic reporting prepared for bond issues. Developed to meet investors' need for current information on existing bonds, Urbics has continued to serve as a reliable source of information on assessed valuation trends, ownership concentration, land use characteristics, tax delinquencies and more. Trading desks rely on Urbics for quick, current reporting on property tax-backed bonds; rating agencies and bond insurers for in-depth analytics on key credit metrics; portfolio managers for surveillance updates of current holdings; and public agencies for independent reporting on the health of the local property tax base. Urbics has provided data for hundreds of bond issues and continuing disclosure filings and has served close to a million reports since it was started more than twenty years ago.

Primary sources, updated quarterly.Urbics obtains its property tax data from primary sources - county assessors, tax collectors and the California State Board of Equalization - and trusted partners specializing in California tax data. Assessed valuation and ownership data is updated annually by August while tax bills and payments are updated in October, January, May and August.

Deep analytics for key metrics.Urbics goes well beyond simply reporting important metrics such as ownership concentration and assessed valaution. Subscribers can dig into the data to discover how ownership concentration has changed over time, which property owners missed a recent tax payment, how rapidly assessed valuation has grown, what properties are driving valuation change, and many other detail reports. For most reports, subscribers can drill down to the parcel level to view detail on each property with links to assessor and tax collector websites.