Glossary - Cotality developer portal

Identifiers and entities

Term	Definition
CLIP	Cotality property identifier — a unique, stable ID for a property; the join key across all data assets. See Identifiers.
APN	Assessor’s parcel number — county-assigned parcel identifier; format varies by county.
Parcel	The legal land unit a property sits on.
Structure	A building on a parcel; a property may have one or more.
Property characteristics	The full set of land, structure, and ownership attributes for a property.
USPS standardization	Normalization of a raw address to USPS Publication 28 format before CLIP resolution.

Market and risk

Term	Definition
HPI	Cotality home price index — measures residential price movement over time.
HPI forecast	Model projection of future home price appreciation or depreciation. A forward estimate, not an observation.
Case-shiller	Widely cited home-price index family produced by Cotality (formerly CoreLogic).
Acute peril	Event-driven hazard (wildfire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, severe storm).
Chronic peril	Slow-onset climate stressor (e.g., heat index, drought).
Return period	The average interval between hazard events of a given severity (e.g., 100-year flood = event with 1% annual probability).
Age of roof	Cotality’s statistically modelled estimate of roof age — not a county record. Always check `yearBuiltModeledIndicator`.

Geography

Term	Definition
ZIP	5-digit postal area; may span county lines.
County	Administrative county unit; basis for tax records and licensing.
CBSA	Core-based statistical area — a metropolitan statistical area (metro market).
FIPS code	Federal information processing standard code identifying a state or county (e.g., `06037` = Los angeles county).

Interfaces and platform

Term	Definition
MCP	Model context protocol — open standard connecting AI agents to tools and data at runtime.
A2A	Agent-to-agent protocol — the communication protocol used by Cotality’s valuation AI agents.
Response envelope	The common `{ success, count, data, messages }` wrapper on every Cotality response. See Response envelope.
Analyticsfilter	The shared input object for all five market and HPI analytics tools (`geography_filter` + optional `time_range`).
Entitlement	Licensed access to a specific data asset or tool, enforced at the token level.

Industry standards

Term	Definition
MISMO	Mortgage industry standards maintenance organization — XML data standard for mortgage transactions. Cotality property fields map to MISMO Residential XML v3.x.
ACORD	Association for cooperative operations research and development — P&C insurance data standard. Cotality construction and roof codes map to ACORD structural rating fields.
USPS Pub 28	USPS postal addressing standards — used to normalize addresses before CLIP resolution.
OGC WKT	Well-known text — geospatial geometry format (OGC standard). Building footprint geometry is returned in WKT, compatible with PostGIS, ArcGIS, and QGIS.
UAD	Uniform appraisal dataset — FHFA standard for appraisal data. Cotality compliance tools validate against UAD rules.
UCDP	Uniform collateral data portal — GSE submission portal for appraisal data.

Cotality was formerly CoreLogic (rebranded 2025). Legacy product names (CLIP, Case-Shiller, AVM) retain the CoreLogic lineage and may appear in legacy API field names. See Platform overview.

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