What Software Do Commercial Real Estate Agents Use?

In order to be successful, commercial real estate (CRE) agents rely on more than just their instinct.CRE goes beyond just dollars and cents, as it also involves understanding and responding to dynamic market conditions, weighing properties’ current value against what they could be worth, and so on. Similarly, reaping a positive return on investment is more than guesswork—or it should be. 

How do commercial real estate agents do it? Simple: they use the best tools and datasets available to inform their decisions, strategies, and outcomes. In this blog, we’re going to pull back the curtain a bit, and explore some of the most commonly-used and best software for real estate agents who work in the commercial sector.

What Are Some Common Commercial Real Estate Tools?

Of all the tools available to commercial real estate agents, two of the most important are a customer relationship management (CRM) platform and commercial real estate database software.

What Is a CRM in Commercial Real Estate?

Commercial real estate agents, brokers, and other related professionals rely on a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to manage their client accounts. Among other things, using a CRM for commercial real estate can help with important tasks like:

• Maintaining complete, up-to-date buyer information and interaction history.
• Managing property listings and prospective buyers.
• Scheduling and tracking appointments and meetings.
• Keeping leads organized and collected in a single, accessible repository.

When each of these activities are performed within a single software environment, CRE agents can make timely, informed decisions as they manage their customer relationships and property portfolios.

How Do I Choose a CRM for Real Estate?

To better understand commercial real estate CRMs pros and cons and which is best, you can start by conducting online research. Rather than relying on each vendor’s website’s marketing-speak, we recommend seeking out reputable third-party reviews and comparisons. You can find these on websites like Software Advice, SourceForge, or Forbes Advisor’s rundown of the best CRM for realtors in 2022.

What Is a CRE Database? 

If there’s one thing that sets some commercial real estate agents and firms apart from their less-successful counterparts, it’s data. What kinds of data? The short answer: any accurate, and up-to-date data that helps illuminate a property’s value, including things like:

• Property-specific data, such as details like the asset type, location, building and lot sizes, number of units, zoning considerations, and more. This data helps maintain an organized portfolio of properties, making it easier to match them with the right buyers. Property ownership data (and history) also falls under this category.
• Transaction-level data, which provides context around a given property’s value and potential return on investment. This helps establish a data-informed price range for a given property.
• Market data, a giant subset of information that creates a holistic view of property values within their geographical market. Market data covers a number of different areas, including economic and socioeconomic factors, demographic developments, local supply and demand, market rates, and more. With a foundation of accurate and up-to-date market data, CRE agents and brokers are better-positioned to:
  • Determine, generally, whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market.
  • Understand a particular area’s demographics, economy, and job market.
  • Analyze a city’s ROI for commercial real estate.
  • Get to know what kind of community a property is in (whether there are high-quality schools, for example).
  • Crunch the numbers around an area’s median listing price, lease values, and occupancy rate.

“Garbage In, Garbage Out”?

There’s a mantra of sorts in the computer science industry, “garbage in, garbage out.” In the tech world, this principle basically states that if the data used to inform decision-making is incomplete, misleading, or otherwise flawed, then any decisions made as a result are likely to be poorly-informed.

This concept can also be applied to commercial real estate software. Even the best CRM or best commercial real estate database software requires a foundation of data that is thorough, up-to-date, and—most importantly—trustworthy.

This is where Canyon Data can make a difference. We provide a level of data accuracy that can’t be beat, thanks to our proprietary process that uses robotics, artificial intelligence, human collaboration, and local research. Simply put, Canyon Data provides more—and better—data, than any other platform on the market. Our offerings include: 

• Monthly data verification, including occupancy/vacancy updates.
• A proprietary qualitative rating system.
• Robust property descriptions (including details like power, amenities, doors/windows, plumbing, and more).

Canyon Data: Powering the Future of CRE

Our vision for the future of CRE is one powered by data you can trust. And it’s a future where CRE brokers can access intelligent and premier insights with unparalleled and locally-sourced information. Simply put, it’s better data for a better future.

Learn more about what makes Canyon Data so different from other vendors by reading more or scheduling a demo.