Recommended COMMERCIAL List Providers

[Joel Gigax]

Hey Guys! 

I am seeking help in order to find a quality list provider for Multi-Family Properties!! I went to ListSource and ListAbility and input the same criteria, however I received varying results. ListAbility had 1,000 less records than ListSource! This is our first time buying commercial list data and want to make sure we do it correctly. Does anybody have any recommendations on commercial list providers that they have successfully used in the past?

Thanks in advance for your help :)

Joel

[Sean OToole]

@Joel Gigax - I always recommend comparing and backtesting as you'll find differences at a county level. Therefore even if someone else says xyz provider is the best - that may only be true for their county, and yours may be different. Unfortunately too many list providers charge per lead, so it's harder to do this then it should be. Too many also only give you the address and not all the details behind their selection also making it hard. Those caveats aside, here is what I recommend:

1. Create as narrow (small) a list as you can that you know should include some properties that you are familiar with. Perhaps use map based tools like radius or polygon to get it down to even just 10-50 results to keep costs down.
2. Pull that list from each provider you are considering.
3. Compare the results against what you personally know about the properties, and ideally compare to the county assessors and recorders records. Drive by the properties if necessary.

Keep in mind that it is important to compare against the county, as that is where many data quality problems come from, rather than the provider.

Also note, that using this process can work well to find the best criteria to use for whatever you are looking for. Multi-family is particularly problematic. In some counties you can rely on property type, in others a criteria like units may work better, and in another units may not work at all. Unfortunately this can also change over time - a county might have great unit count data but only for units built after say 2005. So if you are looking for all units you'll need to use different criteria for pre-2005 vs 2005 on buildings.

Hope that helps.