When your specialty is commercial real estate, you may have realized that this market is less transparent than the residential one.
And you may have come across a company called “Reonomy” that promises to make your life as a commercial real estate pro a bit easier by giving you access to important commercial real estate market data.
So, you may be on the fence and don’t know how Reonomy’s software may help you or whether alternatives could be a bit more affordable.
That’s where today’s article comes in to give you a bit more clarity.
What Is Reonomy?
Reonomy’s core value proposition is software-based data aggregation solutions for the commercial real estate niche.
The aim is to help financial institutions, larger brokerages, and commercial services access essential data to base their decisions in this field.
This also means that the software enables them to improve their research, find opportunities, and deepen their commercial real estate market understanding.
Reonomy was founded in 2013 by Richard Sarkis, Charlie Oshman, Guillermo Sanchez, and Harlan Milkove.
Since then, the co-founder Richard Sarkis has raised $128 million from angel investors or venture capitalists.
The first web platform was launched in New York City. Later in 2017, a second nationwide platform was launched.
According to the company’s website, Reonomy was acquired by Altus Group on November 11, 2021.
How Does Reonomy Work? – The Features
To learn how Reonomy works, let’s use their two core solutions and features.
According to this source, Reonomy uses a team of data scientists and machine learning algorithms to aggregate the data a user can use for different searches and filters on the dashboard.
When you look closer at the solutions and features of software providers, you can often conclude how something is working.
Sure, you can’t know all the details about a proprietary algorithm, but you can at least get clues about how the software works.
The two core solutions or products Reonomy offers are web applications and data solutions.
1) The Web Application
Reonomy’s web application can help you as a commercial real estate pro search and find real estate opportunities and prospects to contact.
The type of data can be categorized into property (characteristics, location, etc.), company (transactions, debt, ownership, etc.), and people (key persons, decision-makers, direct contact details, etc.).
Millions of different records are available in the database, so you can look up details about commercial properties and their owners across the U.S.
There are different search filters available through the web application’s platform, such as:
- Date of the last sale
- Location
- Owner portfolio
- Origination Date and loan amount
- Pre Foreclosures
- Year built
- Tax
- Asset type
Via additional filters, you can narrow down the commercial real estate search by the owner of the record, owner-occupied, mailing address, and owner name.
This was just a tiny snapshot of all available filters, which are more than 200. There is a total of more than 50M properties available.
Another feature of Reonomy’s web application is research to help you better understand the commercial real estate market.
This feature aims to deepen Reonomy’s clients’ understanding of commercial property markets by leveraging available data.
It produces three types of reports:
- Long-form market reports (e.g., what seven recessions can teach us about the next one)
- Short-form topical reports (e.g., rent regulations, oil price impact, etc.)
- Data-centric market glances with snapshots of investment activities
Some of the data points used for these reports are:
- Renovation details
- Location
- Debt history
- Sales history
- Tax history
- Comps
- Opportunity zone status
This is just a short glimpse since up to 100 data points are available in this feature.
The next is the outreach feature, or I would call it the prospecting feature that enables you to directly contact property owners.
In the case of the owner being an LLC which is pretty often the case in commercial real estate, the software helps you find out about the direct contact information via their scraping algorithms that run in the back.
The generated contact data are phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, and the owner’s name.
You can also click on an owner to learn about their linked properties.
You can do the outreach or prospecting part via mailers, cold calling, SMS, and email campaigns from the platform.
The below video will give you a good and short walkthrough of Reonomy’s dashboard and the web application.
2) Reonomy’s Data Solutions
Reonomy’s second core component is called “Data Solutions.” You may consider this component on a more technical side of things.
Why?
It relies heavily on the company’s API that technically-versed users or developers can access to pull commercial real estate data and combine it with their own.
You can access the following data:
- Key property details
- Sales and debt data
- Locations for subject occupants or industries across the U.S.
- Ownership data
Besides this feature’s application programming interface (API), the data feeds are an additional data delivery system.
To summarize the key components and features for you, Reonomy works mainly as a commercial real estate data aggregation software streamlining different data sources and enabling commercial real estate professionals to access this data via the web application or the application programming interface.
The prospecting feature is just a minor feature or, in other words, the icing on the cake.
To date of this writing, Reonomy has access to the following:
- 38M+ Occupant records
- 52M+ Properties
- 30M+ People Profiles
- 150K+ CMBS loans
- 100+ Data points per property
- 100M+ Company profiles
- 3100 counties
- 384 MSAs
How Does Reonomy Get Its Data? The API
Reonomy gets its data by scraping or extracting it from private and public sources using its proprietary algorithm.
How and what this algorithm does exactly isn’t disclosed for obvious reasons (otherwise, it would be open-source).
But what I can assume from my research is that they combine a data scraping algorithm with a machine learning algorithm.
You can access this according to your individual needs via the dashboard (the web app) or the API (if you are a developer or have access to one).
The gathered data, I suppose, is then enhanced again via their machine-learning algorithm to make particular trends available or generate different market reports.
Is Reonomy Accurate?
According to user experience data from a well-known real estate investors forum, a slight majority considers Reonomy’s data accurate.
One user mentioned that the accuracy was about 70%. (source)
While researching this forum, I could observe that the first opinion came out in 2018, and as time passed in the thread, I could find more positive opinions closer to the current date of the thread.
Since the company can still be considered a start-up (founded in 2013), we can assume that accuracy issues may have been improved between 2018 (the first comments) and now.
Reonomy Pricing
Since Reonomy doesn’t disclose pricing on its website, I researched different additional sources and then had to put the informational pieces together.
According to the already mentioned forum (dates back to 2018), the monthly pricing was and/or still is between $159 and $499 per month, and you are locked into a contract for a year.
If you want to get out earlier, there may still be an early termination fee of $468.
Later in the same thread (dated 2019), I found that the basic pricing of $149 per month includes 250 monthly property information downloads.
A later commenter mentions a one-time fee package of $600 upfront (dated 2019).
And the latest pricing information (dated 2020) suggests a monthly starting price of $299.
This source, dated 2022, suggests an introductory price of $49 per month but without many features.
Based on my research, we can assume different pricing packages in different tiers.
The packages with the crucial features start at $299 per month and may still go up to $499 monthly.
The latter price is likely slightly higher since they also increased the basic price.
The one-time fee plan for $600 may still exist, and the basic fee with not many features of $49 per month.
User Reviews – The Bad and The Good
Since Reonomy hasn’t been the most transparent SaaS company regarding their pricing information, I was inquisitive about what different users across several user review platforms would opine regarding them.
We could already get a small glimpse via the Bigger Pockets forum that was leaning more on the positive side of things.
The table below will find four positive and negative reviews from various users.
I only selected the ones that included valuable information about using the platform’s features and their results. Reviews like “nice tool” aren’t too helpful and thus were omitted.
Sources:
- https://www.capterra.com/p/208413/Reonomy/reviews/
- https://www.g2.com/products/reonomy/reviews#reviews
- https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/549676-reonomy-need-review
| Positive Reviews | Negative Reviews |
|---|---|
| "I like how it is very user-friendly and it takes about 20 minutes to learn the whole program. I also like the data it provides as other companies do not give as much information." | "Also there are properties that I am aware of from knowing the area, that simply don't show up on Reonomy. That's frustrating as I pay a lot for this service and there's a lot missing." |
| "The ability to add custom labels to properties is extremely helpful in staying organized. Additionally, I love how you can search for other properties that an owner has extremely easy." | "The feature I would like to be improved is the ability to connect it to Salesforce a little easier, and be able to import to the CRM the owner information we are interested in." |
| "Reonomy is a very good software for locating comps through all of commercial real estate in the United States." | "Your ability to give accurate information on Vacant Land is atrocious. I would say that it is 95% inaccurate. If your likelihood to sell tool says high then 100% of the time it has already been developed. I think you guys are very expensive but if it were not for the Vacant Land issue I would recommend your service" |
| "Team friendly tool that helps us track conversations, database strategies and really focus on property locations." | "I tried using them before. They were too expensive for what I was doing and found they didn't have all the data in all markets. It was very lacking in the area I was trying to use it." |
Let’s see how Reonomy fairs against several alternatives in the next sections.
Reonomy Competitors and Alternatives
When looking for competitors, we need to consider the nuances and that the competitor or alternative has at least a significant overlap in functionality and features.
I also researched other sources to cross-check if there would be additional alternatives like those identified in the above section.
But what you mostly find are not real alternatives but a mix of real estate software solutions, not considering the nuances.
Based on the functionality, features, and market positioning, the direct alternatives I identified are Costar, Prospect Now, and Compstak.
Reonomy vs. Costar
As a first impression, Costar’s website is slightly confusing compared to Reonomy.
When I went to the product area, it took me some time to realize I was already in the right place because the different products and features were displayed in a layout resembling more blog post excerpts.
Besides that, Costar is a larger commercial real estate data aggregation and service provider and has existed since 1987.
They are pretty similar in their public pricing transparency, which is non-existing.
Here as well, only secondary sources can help. According to this slightly outdated forum thread, Costar’s monthly pricing is likely higher than Reonomy’s (in the four-figure range).
Services and software features offered are:
- Independent research for commercial properties
- Commercial real estate comps
- Commercial property listings (for sale)
- Lease comparables
- Commercial real estate for lease listings
- View of commercial tenants
- Analytics for trends and market data
- Public record search for commercial properties
- Information about investing, lending, and financial trends
- Custom reporting
- Lease analysis for cash flow calculations
- News about the latest developments in the commercial real estate field
Although Costar has existed longer than Reonomy, they have data about only 5.9 million commercial properties (source) compared to the 52M+ you get with Reonomy.
So all-in-all, the main differences between Reonomy and Costar are that Costar also offers individual research services, a commercial property listing area, and a view of commercial tenants but has less data available about commercial properties.
You can check out Costar here.
Reonomy vs. Propstream
I already analyzed Propstream in this article. The differences between Reonomy and this software are a bit easier to determine.
Although Propstream is in the data aggregation business, you quickly realize that its main focus is not so much commercial real estate.
The focus of their software solution is more tailored to the retail real estate market.
So, in that sense, Reonomy and Propstream are not even direct competitors.
Another difference is that it offers more marketing and lead generation features (e.g., website landing pages, voice mail campaigns, etc.).
And since it’s more tailored to retail properties and smaller real estate investors, it provides a rehab cost calculator.
In contrast to Reonomy, the pricing plans are also publicly disclosed.
You can learn more about Propstream here.
Reonomy vs. Prospect Now
Compared to Reonomy regarding features, Prospect Now is more in between Propstream and Reonomy.
There is no clear focus on retail property data aggregation or commercial properties.
So, with Prospect Now, you can find property and owner information for residential and commercial properties.
In contrast to Reonomy, the software has access to 42M commercial properties (10M fewer than Reonomy).
Similar to Reonomy, machine learning is used in their algorithm.
It can predict the likelihood of properties selling or refinancing in the next 12 months.
So, if you don’t focus in your real estate business on only commercial real estate but both residential and commercial properties, Prospect Now may be the better option.
You can check out ProspectNow here.
Reonomy vs. LoopNet
Compared to Reonomy, LoopNet has an entirely different business model.
The company is not even in the SaaS (software as a service) business but in the advertising and marketing business.
Why?
Because it is a commercial property marketplace where you can find commercial properties for lease, for sale, in auctions and businesses for sale.
No software is provided that helps you scrape and aggregate commercial real estate data about owners or properties.
As an owner, you can advertise on the platform, so you get found and be able to sell.
You can learn more about LoopNet here.
Reonomy vs. Compstak
With Compstak, you are dealing again with a direct competitor of Reonomy.
There is a lot of similarity in terms of features, but Compstak likely may have more accurate commercial property data available when you take a closer look.
Why?
Because they offer a feature called “Rigorous Data Verification” that combines human-based with software or algorithmic-based data verification processes.
Regarding accessible commercial property data, they have much less than Reonomy, with just 1.5M compared to 52M+.
So, since the remaining features are similar to Reonomy’s and the core difference is the data verification feature, I assume they aim to be quality leaders in this real estate niche.
You can check out Compstak here.
Reonomy vs. Crexi
With Crexi, we have the same situation as with LoopNet. They are no direct competitors to Reonomy since their focus is also being a commercial real estate marketplace.
The company is more of a direct competitor to LoopNet, though.
They provide an extensive commercial property search feature where you can find for lease, for sale, and auction properties and generate comps.
Additionally, you can also further evaluate commercial properties and markets.
With this feature, they enter more into direct competition with Reonomy since you can also look up owner information and transaction history.
But again, this is just a small “side-feature” and not the focus.
You can learn more about Crexi here.
Is Reonomy Worth It?
Generally, Reonomy is worthwhile for larger commercial real estate companies and/or brokerages that want access to the largest number of commercial properties available and to save time on research.
Because of the higher monthly price tags, Reonomy is tailored to larger commercial real estate companies or brokerages.
But compared to Costar, Compstak, and ProspectNow (the direct competitors), Reonomy has the largest number of commercial properties in their databases and a good balance between pricing, available data, and data accuracy.
Since the commercial real estate market hasn’t been the most transparent one in the past, Reonomy’s solutions can compensate for this situation and increase market transparency.
But so do the direct competitors.
If, for example, both Costar (the direct competitor) and Reonomy had some more concrete data, such as particular metrics about their data accuracy, I could have dug further into marketing key performance indicators and made a recommendation based on that.
To give you a better perspective on whether Reonomy is worth it, you will find the key differences from the direct competitors in the table below.
| Costar | Compstak | Prospect Now |
|---|---|---|
| Access to 5.9M commercial properties | Access to 1.5M commercial properties | Access to 42M commercial properties |
| Individual research services | Likely more accurate commercial property data | Owner information for both residential and commercial properties |
| Commercial property listing area | ||
| View of commercial tenants |
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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