Do you generally find Commercial Real Estate software to be expensive?
I help a small residential real estate company in Boston handle their web listings. They're branching into commercial somewhat so they've tasked me with finding a simple way to add their commercial listings to their website. Everything I'm finding is expensive, or residential focused or not real substantial enough. 

What does your office use? Maybe website listings aren't beneficial and people prefer to just go to LoopNet or something. I see LoopNet has a widget, but it's boring looking and looks outdated/clunky on the website. Any thoughts?
[{"id": "ddom44d", "text": "Well, I have, during my CRE career worked for CRE data providers and in CRE brokerage. The two top CRE data providers are Xceligent and Costar, and the top two marketing sites are LoopNet and CommercialSearch.  So, here's what I can tell you from my experience with each:\n\nFirst thing I want to clarify, Xceligent and Costar are data providers. LoopNet and Commercial Search are marketing tools. They serve completely different purposes. Xceligent and Costar are designed for CRE professionals, and LoopNet and CommercialSearch are aimed at small-time CRE buyers.\n\n- Xceligent and Costar proactively research every building, and their researchers update them in the system, on a monthly basis. \n- LoopNet and CommercialSearch are broker loaded, so you can't be sure how accurate and up-to-date the data is. \n- Xceligent and Costar have more than property/space available; they have data (historical sale and lease comps, tenant details, historical occupancy, demographics, multi-level building-by-building contact info...). All of this data is often available through various public databases, but these guys have gathered it into one property file for each building. \n- You can use Xceligent and Costar to prospect for new investment sales business, as you will have current owner, what's their cost basis, did they get a loan, if so, how much, does it balloon soon, has the vacancy improved or declined dramatically in the last year, are they eligible for a 1031...\n- You can use Xceligent and Costar to prospect for new tenant rep business. You may have lease expirations, when they moved in, contact info... With some additional research, maybe you learn they are a growing company and their current building has no space for them to grow. \n- You can use Xceligent and Costar to prospect for new landlord rep business. Look for buildings who's vacancy has dropped with no recent rental activity, or other reasons an owner may not be happy with their current rep. Owner contact info is in there, so you just give them a call. \n- All if these prospecting methods require 50-100 cold calls a day to succeed, but given you have all the info at your fingertips, and, assuming your Sales Rep has trained you well on the tool, doing 100 cold calls in a day is easy (logistically...you may be burnt at the end of the day, but welcome to CRE)\n\n**Summary**\nIf you want to get serious about CRE, you **need** one of these paid products. Relying on LoopNet and/or CommercialSearch will be like doing the job with one hand and one leg tied behind your back while wearing a blindfold, compared to the big shops.  They sound expensive, but the commission from one deal can pay for Xceligent, and two deals will pay for Costar. It's not a matter if if you can afford to have it, but rather if you can afford not to have it. \n\n**Xceligent vs Costar**\n- Costar has been around longer, and has a much more advanced system (great if you're tech savvy, not so great if you're not), but they are expensive, and their customer service is sometimes takes a while on hold.  And, make sure you read the fine print in the contract...send in a cancellation notice a week after you sign up, or else it will auto-renew (according to the strict cancellation timeframes); that way you have an opportunity to, at the end of the year, determine if the tool has provided to value you expected. \n- Xceligent is a less expensive, more basic (aka simple) interface. It's a smaller company, with fewer markets, but it was recently acquired by a huge publicly traded company (DMGI) and they are expanding rapidly.  Their customer service is very easy to reach, but also make sure to read the fine print in the contract, as they auto-renew as well, so send a cancellation letter after you sign up to ensure you have time to verify you want to continue at the end of your contract. They're having some growing pains with the massive expansion, but Boston is in the next group, or the one after that, of expansion cities (currently launching NY, which is a huge and lengthy undertaking), so you wouldn't have access yet, but maybe within a year. \n\nI hope that helps. Both are good, valuable tools, and selecting which will be best for any firm comes down to what exactly you need, and what you can afford.  From my experience, in some markets, the data for one might be better than the data of the other, but in the market a state over, it might be reversed. \n\nEdit: added some additional info and can't English good. ", "replies": [{"id": "ddp1zrx", "text": "Do either of these services provide access to their data directly? Great post btw", "replies": [{"id": "ddpp7zm", "text": "No downloading data from LoopNet or CommercialSearch, but with both Costar and Xceligent you can download the data in .csv format, but both limit what/how much can be exported. I'm not 100% on what the exact limits are, but this is what I think: \n\nCostar = C\nXceligent = X\n\n**Property Info**\nC - limit on # of props per export (500 ish)\nX - no limit\n\n**Sale Comps**\nC - limit on # of comps per export (250 ish)\nX - 1,000\n\n**Lease Comps**\nC - limit on # of comps per export (250 ish)\nX - 1,000\n\n**Tenant Info**\nC - PDF only ??\nX - 1,000 per month\n\n**Historical Analytics**\nC - I think PDF only\nX - unlimited\n\n**CRE Professional Directory**\nC - I think PDF only\nX - no directory\n\nAlso, I forgot to mention, when you subscribe to Xceligent, you get Comps in your market, but property, tenant and analytics for every market Xceligent is included, with export restrictions on the other markets. Costar is more a la carte: you can select which databases and which markets you need, and just subscribe to that one. Costar, with only property data for one market, is still likely more expensive than the full Xceligent product, but again, Costar is a much more in-depth, complex system with feature not available in Xceligent, like marketing forecasting.  Additionally, something to note when choosing is how long has the provider been in the market?  For example, Boston. Let's say Xceligent launches that market next year, their researched sale and lease comp history is going to be limited to the length of time they've been researching the market. They typically add 5-10 years of public record history, but that only populates 20-30 of the 200+ fields a researched comp contains. Costar, however, has been there for over a decade, so they are going to have researched sale comps going back that far.  This may or may not be relevant to someone; if you work exclusively in leasing, a couple years of comp history is fine. But, if you're in investment sales, that history is **critical**. ", "replies": [{"id": "ddq7ehs", "text": "Is this an accurate link of the markets they serve? http://www.costar.com/about/SubmarketMaps.aspx\n\n(They don't have info on Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island -- just Manhattan as \"New York City\"?)", "replies": [{"id": "ddqqpco", "text": "That may be true. I'm not familiar with the NY market and I can only see the two markets in my state. I don't know if the Costar website listing app (Showcase) allows you to put out-of-market listings in (I've got to think they do), but I know Xceligent does. Any listing your client may have could be listed on the website, regardless of location. \n\nOne thing to note, unlike the residential MLS service, the CRE marketing sites, Xceligent Direct and Costar Showcase, CRE firms aren't able to put market-wide property searches on their website for their clients to use.  The MLS allows visitors to residential firms' websites to view every listing in the market(s)...not just that firm's listings. This cannot be done by either Xceligent or Costar.  The MLS data is entered and maintained by the agents. Costar and Xceligent's data is proprietary...they both have spent millions to build their db, so they don't allow free access to subscribers clients via broker' website. ", "replies": [], "depth": 5}], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "ddq9nin", "text": "Wow, thank you for the incredible breakdown. I'll be showing them Xceligent. CoStar is too heavy for us right now, but I understand what you mean about this:\n\n&gt; It's not a matter if you can afford to have it, but rather if you can afford not to have it.\n\nThey've looked at CoStart but they're just not there yet. I'm not the decision maker, I just present the info and help them weigh their options from a technical standpoint. Thanks again!", "replies": [{"id": "dds93z1", "text": "If they want to start with Xceligent Direct or Costar Showcase just for marketing their listings on their website and not as a data provider, the cost maybe more palatable. ", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "dg2e3cy", "text": "Holy shit, 100 cold calls a day! hahaha", "replies": [{"id": "dg38x0h", "text": "Starting up in the biz, absolutely. Now, with a developed client base, hell no. I can't imagine having to go back to that. ", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ddpbb6d", "text": "Check out buildout.  That is what my company uses.  It links to our website and to constant contact and mailchimp.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ddppyto", "text": "Also, putting listings on their website can be done with:\n\nXceligent Direct - you pay per listing. About $150/month for &lt;25 (?) listings. Their assigned researcher will call monthly to update their listings. \n\nCostar - not sure, but more expensive than that. Their assigned researcher will call monthly to update their listings. \n\nLoopNet - LoopLink, also, not sure, but the agents are responsible for keeping the listings up to date. \n\nBuildOut - it accomplishes what you're looking for, but it does SO MUCH MORE than that, and I'm not sure a small resimmercial shop would really be able to take advantage of all those features. ", "replies": [{"id": "ddq9rb8", "text": "Thanks! This is a good list. Do you have any idea how much Buildout costs? There pricing is nowhere to be found online. I agree that Buildout might be a little more than necessary, but I'll let them decide that.", "replies": [{"id": "ddqqwiz", "text": "I don't, but when I get back to my office (out of town right now), I'll ask the marketing department.  ", "replies": [{"id": "ddro59m", "text": "Thanks!", "replies": [{"id": "dds5yd3", "text": "Pricing is per agent, with volume pricing available for brokerage shops, and it is depends on implementation. Template creation and even optional in-house database integration is included in the monthly pricing, which starts at about $100 per commercial agent.  The property and listing information is not in the system, but once you've entered it for that building, it is stored. I think there might be BuildOut modules that work with some of the CRE data providers, but either way, you can use the export to .csv feature to add the property details. ", "replies": [{"id": "ddugr2m", "text": "Thanks so much for getting back to me on that. That's a decent price considering there's really one commercial agent that handles that side of the business. Maybe they would purchase two subscriptions, one for the agent and one for the broker. I personally like that they offer in-house data integration because it will make my life as a developer easier :) I'll dig into it a little more. Thanks again!", "replies": [], "depth": 6}], "depth": 5}], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dfgjtgq", "text": "Real estate professionals are dedicated to making your real estate career more efficient and simple. We have provided a software that is affordable and offers everything your need to manage your real estate career and team in one easy to use place. If you want to check best real estate software at https://www.softwaresuggest.com/real-estate-software", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "ivtttb1", "text": "Has the company you work for ever thought about custom software/tool?  This is great if what they're currently using isn't working or like you mentioned, is too expensive.  The upfront costs may be a bit more but the longterm benefits would outweight that.  \nIf interested, I recommend just talking with a [developer](https://www.onestopdevshop.io/) to see what the budget would be, how long it would take and if it was even a good idea.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]