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Originally published July 23, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified July 23, 2007 at 2:02 AM

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Central tracking site for home lenders

A weekly column profiling companies and personalities. This week:

What: DepotPoint, based in Bellevue

Who: Prakash Kondepudi, 43, president and CEO

What it does: Uses technology to provide homebuyers, real-estate agents, mortgage lenders and attorneys with streamlined foreclosure data.

Three-fold function: DepotPoint tracks foreclosures, tax delinquencies and bankruptcies, providing an early-warning system for mortgage lenders. It makes information audit-ready for attorneys; and gives free access to foreclosure addresses and auction status on the Web site. It gives paid subscribers more detailed property information and advice.

Employees: 23. Expects to have 30 to 40 by the year's end. The company launched in San Diego recently and hopes its services will be available nationwide by next summer. Kondepudi said the company deals with only a few local nuances, which allows for quick expansion into new areas.

Roots: Founded in summer 2005 and launched in fall 2006. Kondepudi, formerly a vice president at Bellevue-based InfoSpace, sought to improve the foreclosure process by creating a technological solution to the fragmented, manual process of obtaining information.

Helping everybody: DepotPoint hopes its technology will provide not only more efficiency for lenders, attorneys and buyers, but also reduce costs for the borrower.

Money: Kondepudi's only comment on the private company's finances: "We're generating revenue."

Competition (or lack thereof): There are pockets of competition, mostly Web-site listings and advertisements, but Kondepudi says there's no other major player.

"Huge opportunity": Foreclosures represent a considerable portion of the housing market, but are complex and difficult to understand, Kondepudi said. He hopes his company will remove the mystery from the foreclosure investment.

The big picture: The few people knowledgeable about the process are grabbing heavy discounts on foreclosed properties, Kondepudi said. "We're democratizing this process," he said. Kondepudi admits DepotPoint's technology might mean less savings for the foreclosure buyer, but it means there'd be a more level playing field.

— Bibeka Shrestha

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

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