The foundation for Real Estate Data Services was put in place when we created a real estate appraisal partnership in 1993.  That company, Performance Appraisal, continues to provide professional real property valuation services to this day.  While times have changed a lot since then, one thing has not.  Lenders still make loans based on the timeliness, accuracy and completeness of comparable sales data on appraisal assignments.  As Certified Real Estate Appraisers in the early 90's, we were aware of our responsibility to clients and disappointed with the limited sources of information available at that time.

By 1994 we had mountains of public information on paper cataloged in every corner of our appraisal office.  Searching these records was a frustrating task we performed almost daily.  (How many times have you repeatedly searched through a paper report because you couldn't find enough comparable sales on the first or second search?)  We were highly motivated to find something better.  It was at this point that we decided to create and maintain an electronic database of property sales to increase our efficiency.

As the months passed, the database began to take shape.  In fact, it was such a tremendous improvement over thumbing through courthouse reports that we decided to share the database with other real estate professionals.  Real Estate Data Services started modestly on January 1st, 1995 with searchable data for only two counties.  Monthly updates were distributed to subscribers on floppy disk.

This Web site reflects the ongoing efforts of many detail oriented people over a period of more than eight years.  It also represents our arrival with the database service to a destination we could only imagine when we were simply looking to become more efficient in our appraisal office.  Thanks to evolving technology and the subsequent growing popularity of the Internet, today you can access the sales data of more than a quarter million property transfers for eight counties in southern central Pennsylvania --- from your home or office.