How do I go about returning a hou.Parm's type (float, int, toggle, etc.) and default value (basically the information we put on the asset definition). I was a bit surprised to find out that hou.Parm did not have methods (or at least appears not to have methods) to return this…

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/hou/Parm#parmTemplate [sidefx.com]
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/hou/ParmTemplate#dataType [sidefx.com]
(or http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/hou/ParmTemplate#type [sidefx.com] ?
)
Defaults depend on the specific template type eg.
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/hou/FloatParmTemplate#defaultValue [sidefx.com]

thank you! that is fantastic!