1. Commercial real estate listings marketplaces: what are they and who uses them?

A listings marketplace is a searchable catalogue of commercial properties that an owner or broker has chosen to advertise for sale or lease. It is organized around available inventory. Its coverage is the set of properties currently on the market, which at any time is a small share of the total commercial building stock, and its audience is buyers, tenants and the brokers marketing to them.

LoopNet, owned by CoStar Group, is the largest example in the United States and reports about 13 million monthly visitors. Crexi runs a marketplace of more than 500,000 U.S. listings with auction and deal-room tools, and has added a paid data layer on top. Marketplaces are free to search and charge for listing placement and premium exposure.

When is a listings marketplace the wrong tool?

The marketplace is the right tool when the job is finding or advertising something that is on the market. It is the wrong tool for finding owners of properties that are not, which is the most common source of confusion with the data platforms described below.

2. Research and market analytics platforms: what do they do?

A research and analytics platform is organized around verified market information: sale and lease comparables, vacancy and rent trends, tenant rosters, construction pipelines and forecasts, typically maintained by an in-house research team and sold on annual contracts. It is the tool for underwriting a deal, writing a market report or supporting a valuation.

CoStar is the primary example, with about 8.5 million commercial property records built on several decades of research, and it also owns LoopNet and Apartments.com. Other examples include Moody’s CRE (formerly Reis) for market data and forecasts, and CompStak for crowd-sourced lease and sale comps. Research platforms include owner information on the properties they track, but the product is organized around the market data, and pricing reflects the research cost.

3. Property and ownership data platforms: what are they?

A property and ownership data platform is organized around the full universe of commercial parcels, on the market or not, and around the question of who owns each one. It combines county property records, recorded sales and mortgages, tax data and tenant data with the identity of the people and companies behind the owner of record, and attaches contact information. It is the tool for off-market prospecting, lead generation and enriching a firm’s own records, and it is sold as a per-user web application, an API, or a bulk data feed.

How do ownership data platforms identify the owner behind an LLC?

They match the entity named on the deed against state business filings, other property records and business databases, follow the chain to a parent company or an individual, and score how confident the match is. Reonomy, an Altus Group business, is an example of this type. It covers more than 54 million commercial properties across all 50 states, with 68 million transactions, 30 million owner and contact records and 5.2 million companies, drawn from more than 3,100 county assessor offices, Secretary of State filings, U.S. Census data and licensed partnerships. Its distinguishing function is entity resolution: it links the LLC or trust on the deed to the individuals and parent companies behind it using machine learning, labels each contact as a likely owner or a connected party, assigns a match score, and flags whether a phone number, email or mailing address is on file. It also scores properties on their likelihood to sell. Other products in or near this type include PropertyRadar and Cherre, which is organized around data integration rather than end-user search. Crexi Intelligence and CoStar Owners also offer owner contact features from inside the marketplace and research types.

Who uses property and ownership data platforms?

The ownership data platform is the right tool when the job is finding owners by criteria (asset type, size, tenure, debt maturity, location) and contacting them directly. Brokers use it to source listings, investors to find off-market deals, lenders to find maturing loans, and commercial service providers such as roofing, HVAC and solar companies to find building owners to sell to.

4. Public-record and title research tools: what are they used for?

A public-record tool is organized around the county file for a single property: owner of record, deed and mortgage documents, assessed value, tax history, liens, violations and permits. It answers “what does the county have on this address” quickly and, for basic lookups, cheaply. It is the everyday tool for title research, due diligence on a known property and appraisal support.

PropertyShark, owned by Yardi, is the best-known example, with especially deep coverage in New York City and researched owner phone numbers in its paid reports. County assessor and recorder websites are the free version and cover one parcel at a time. Title plants and services such as DataTree (First American) and the property data products of Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) sit at the professional end of this type and are also the upstream sources that data platforms license.

When should you use a public-record tool instead of a data platform?

Public-record tools are the right choice when the property is already known and the question is about its history. They are slower than an ownership data platform when the job is building a list across a territory.

5. Valuation and underwriting software: what does it do?

Valuation and underwriting software is organized around a single asset’s cash flows. It models leases, expenses, capital costs and financing to produce a value or a return, and it is used by appraisers, acquisitions analysts, lenders and asset managers. It takes data in from the research and ownership types and produces the number a deal is done on.

ARGUS Enterprise, from Altus Group, is the industry standard for institutional cash-flow modeling. Excel remains the most common underwriting tool at smaller firms. Appraisal-specific software such as Narrative1 and the valuation workflow tools of the large appraisal firms belong here too. Valuation software does not source deals or find owners; it evaluates what the other tools surface.

6. Deal and relationship management (CRM) software: what is it in commercial real estate?

Deal and relationship management software is organized around the pipeline: contacts, properties, conversations, offers and tasks. It is the CRM for a brokerage or investment team. Its value depends on the data fed into it, which is why ownership data platforms are typically integrated with it by export or API.

Buildout, Apto, Salesforce configured for CRE, and HubSpot are common examples. Some marketplaces and ownership platforms include light pipeline features, and some CRMs bundle property data, but the CRM’s organizing object is the relationship, not the property.

7. Property and asset management software: what does it do?

Property and asset management software is organized around the operation of a building that is already owned: leases, rent collection, maintenance, accounting and investor reporting. It is used by owners, operators and managers after a deal closes, and it produces the operating data that later feeds valuation and, in aggregate, research platforms.

Yardi Voyager, MRI Software, RealPage and AppFolio are the principal examples. This type has the least overlap with the others; a firm that only manages buildings may not need a marketplace, a research platform or an ownership database at all.

How do the seven types of CRE software work together?

The types form a rough sequence that follows a deal. A property is found either on a marketplace (if it is listed) or through an ownership data platform (if it is not). It is checked against public records and underwritten with research data in valuation software. The conversation is tracked in a CRM. After closing, the building runs on property management software, and its operating results eventually feed back into the research platforms and the valuation models.

Which CRE software does a broker, investor, lender or contractor need?

A brokerage team typically runs a marketplace, an ownership data platform, a research platform and a CRM. An investor adds valuation software. A lender pairs an ownership platform (for maturing loans) with underwriting software. A commercial service provider usually needs only the ownership platform and a CRM. An appraiser lives in research, public-record and valuation tools.

Which type of commercial real estate software answers which question?

How do you choose the right commercial real estate software?

Start with the question the team asks most often, because each type is built around one question and answers the others badly. If the question is “what is available,” a marketplace, which is free to search. If it is “what is the market doing,” a research platform, and expect an annual contract. If it is “who owns this and how do I reach them,” an ownership data platform; check that it covers every parcel in your market rather than only listed ones, that it resolves entities to people with a confidence score, and that it can export to your CRM. If it is “what is on file for this address,” a public-record tool. If it is “what is it worth,” valuation software. Pipeline and operations questions point to CRM and property management respectively.

Why do firms end up paying for overlapping CRE software?

Overlap is where budgets get wasted. A research platform with owner names is not a prospecting database, and a marketplace with a data add-on does not cover the properties that were never listed. Buy each type for the question it is organized around, and connect them by export or API rather than expecting one product to do all seven jobs.

Closing

Most CRE software confusion disappears once you know which question each type is built to answer. If yours is who owns a building and how to reach them, that is the job an ownership data platform does, and you can test one against your own market with a free trial of Reonomy.