Commercial real estate data is fragmented across a handful of specialized providers, each with different strengths, different coverage, and different pricing. Unlike public equities, where Bloomberg terminals and SEC filings provide essentially comprehensive data, CRE transactions happen in private markets with no central clearinghouse, no mandatory disclosure, and significant variation in how deals are reported.
Sophisticated analysts triangulate across multiple data providers, recognizing that no single source captures the full picture and that cross-referencing is the only way to produce reliable market analysis. Understanding what each provider covers and what they miss is essential for anyone doing serious CRE research.
CoStar is the dominant provider for property inventory, lease data, and comparable sales on a property-by-property basis. The CoStar database covers millions of commercial buildings across North America with property characteristics, ownership history, tenant rolls, and historical rent data.
CoStar's strength is comprehensiveness: for any given submarket, a CoStar research portal typically shows the full inventory of buildings, most of the tenants, most of the leasing activity, and most of the transactions. The weakness is that data quality varies dramatically by market; primary markets have excellent coverage while tertiary markets have significant gaps, and CoStar collects much of its data through voluntary broker reporting, which means new transactions may lag the market by weeks or months and may be incomplete until the reporting broker updates the record.
CoStar acquired LoopNet to cover the listing side and Apartments.com to cover residential data, and its overall dominance in the information layer is one of the defining structural facts of commercial real estate data.
Real Capital Analytics (RCA), now owned by MSCI, is the standard provider for institutional transaction data. Where CoStar focuses on inventory, RCA focuses specifically on sales activity over a minimum deal size (typically $2.5 million), producing a near-comprehensive database of institutional CRE transactions with cap rates, buyer/seller identities, financing terms, and property characteristics.
RCA's data underpins the RCA Commercial Property Price Index (the RCA CPPI, now published by MSCI) and is a primary source for institutional market-level cap-rate analysis and transaction-volume tracking. Green Street publishes its own, separate Commercial Property Price Index built from REIT-owned asset valuations rather than from RCA's closed-transaction data.
Green Street Advisors itself is a separate specialized provider focused on REIT research, NAV estimates, and institutional market commentary, producing the consensus NAV numbers that most REIT investors treat as the reference point for premium/discount analysis. These three providers (CoStar, RCA/MSCI, and Green Street) form the core of institutional CRE data infrastructure, and most serious research mandates rely on all three.
A growing set of newer data providers are challenging the incumbents in specific niches. CompStak crowdsources lease data from brokers in exchange for access to the aggregated database, with a focus on detailed lease terms (concessions, TI allowances, free rent) that are harder to find in traditional sources.
Yardi Matrix has built a strong position in multifamily data and is expanding into other sectors. Reonomy and several similar databases use public records and alternative data sources to produce property-level intelligence at lower price points than CoStar.
Each provides a different slice of the market, and for specific research questions (How much TI is being offered in Class A office in Chicago right now? What is the actual concession package in Dallas industrial?) the specialized providers may offer better data than the generalist platforms.
The question for any research project is which sources to consult and how much weight to give each, and that question does not have a single correct answer; it depends on the specific geography, property type, and analytical question being investigated.
CoStar is the dominant source for the information layer: property inventory, building characteristics, ownership history, tenant rolls, availabilities, and both lease and sale comparables, covering millions of buildings across North America. Its strength is comprehensiveness in primary markets; its weaknesses are thinner coverage in tertiary markets and a reliance on voluntary broker reporting that can lag new activity by weeks.
RCA, acquired by MSCI and now branded MSCI Real Capital Analytics, specializes in transactions. It tracks sales above a minimum deal size (historically about $2.5 million) with cap rates, buyer and seller identities, and financing terms, and its data underpins widely cited institutional price and cap-rate series. Where CoStar answers what exists and what is leasing, RCA answers what actually traded and at what pricing.
Because CRE transactions happen in private markets with no central clearinghouse or mandatory disclosure, no single provider captures the full picture. Analysts triangulate: CoStar for submarket inventory and comparable leases, RCA for transaction volume and market cap-rate trends, and Green Street for REIT-level research and consensus net asset value estimates used in premium and discount analysis.
Newer, specialized providers fill specific gaps. CompStak crowdsources detailed lease economics such as concessions, free rent, and tenant-improvement allowances that are hard to find elsewhere; Yardi Matrix is strong in multifamily; and public-record platforms offer property-level intelligence at lower price points. Which sources to weight depends on the geography, property type, and question, and there is no single correct combination.
CoStar is the leading source for property inventory, lease, tenant, availability, and comparable data building by building. RCA, now MSCI Real Capital Analytics, specializes in transaction data: sales above a minimum deal size with cap rates, buyers, sellers, and financing. CoStar covers what exists; RCA covers what traded.
CoStar covers the property information layer: building inventory and characteristics, ownership history, tenant rolls, current availabilities, lease comparables, and sale comparables across millions of commercial buildings, with the deepest coverage in primary markets and thinner data in tertiary ones.
RCA tracks institutional CRE transactions above a minimum deal size (historically around $2.5 million), recording cap rates, buyer and seller identities, and financing terms. It is the standard source for market-level cap-rate analysis and transaction-volume tracking and feeds several institutional price indices.
It depends on the question. Use CoStar for inventory, availabilities, and lease or sale comps; RCA for transaction volume and cap-rate trends; Green Street for REIT research and NAV; and niche sources like CompStak or Yardi Matrix for detailed lease terms or multifamily. Serious research triangulates across several.
No. Green Street is a third institutional pillar for REIT research and consensus NAV. Specialized platforms include CompStak for crowdsourced lease economics, Yardi Matrix for multifamily, and various public-record databases offering lower-cost property intelligence. Each captures a different slice of a fragmented market.