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Why does it make sense for CompStak to be free?
How do we collect and verify our data?
How much does CompStak cost and why is CompStak free are the most commonly asked questions.
You asked, we answered! We often get the question — How much does CompStak cost? People often remark — It’s too good to be true, how can CompStak’s data be more accurate while also being free?
These are reasonable questions, especially in the CRE space where it’s unusual to get free CRE database services. This is particularly so with data like confirmed lease comp details such as concessions and net effective rents, and non-public sale comp information like NOI and cap rates.
Sounds a bit complicated, right? Let’s dive into it and go through CompStak pricing, products, types of users, and how we are able to offer free services.
Why is CompStak Exchange free?
At CompStak, we have two products: CompStak Exchange and CompStak Enterprise. CompStak Exchange is a free CRE database for brokers, appraisers, and researchers or CRE professionals working at commercial real estate brokerage and appraisal firms. CompStak Enterprise is a license-based platform for lenders, asset managers, private equity investors, portfolio managers, CMBS investors, and other CRE professionals.
The reason why we are able to offer our CompStak Exchange members free services is simple. It’s crowdsourcing. Our members share their CRE data with us to get access to the comps they’re looking for.
Our users often think they get a comp for a comp, while in reality, they get access to multiple lease comps and sales comps in exchange for their data. Because recency matters to you, it matters to us, so we award more credits to members who share recent commercial real estate data with us.
In addition to offering access to lease and sale comp data, we provide our members with a market-based research and productivity tool — Market Dashboard, which enables users to review and share key activity, insights, and trends at no cost. All CompStak Exchange members have access to the Market Dashboard simply by joining CompStak even without sharing any comps.
Why does it make sense for CompStak to be free?
How were CRE brokers and appraisers gathering comps 10 years ago before tech entered the real estate sector? If you imagine people spending hours calling each other and exchanging comps, you won’t be mistaken. Even though the process was time-consuming, it was free. At CompStak, we replicated the free and fair “offline” practice of trading comps and brought it “online.” We then added other cool features such as property pages, custom exports, analytics, and other free commercial real estate data.
CRE professionals like you share their commercial real estate information with us. We verify, normalize, organize, and deliver this data to you for free because the data we have comes from YOU. And if our data comes from you, why would we charge you for it? Unlike other CRE data providers, we don’t view our 30,000+ members as a source of revenue. Instead, we focus on engaging and building relationships with our members that result in high-quality, accurate data. The result is one of the best commercial real estate information resources supported by high-quality, accurate data.
Then, you might wonder how our data would be accurate if we don’t charge you for it? And how does CompStak make money? And how does our data compare to other providers?
Let’s dive into the details…
How do we collect and verify our data?
CompStak Exchange operates on a give-to-get basis so you can share comps to unlock other comps. We gather comps from confirmed CRE professionals, who go through a pre-qualification process before they’re allowed to submit their data to us and use the platform. Once a member has been confirmed and shares their comps, all data goes through a verification process.
CompStak has a robust data processing pipeline designed to ensure quality and allows for our free CRE database to be constantly reviewed, confirmed, and/or updated. Behind every one of our comps, there’s a well-documented history of each version we’ve received — and each underlying data field — as well as our own data analysts’ adjustments and notes.
Given their complexity, lease contracts go through an additional abstraction stage before the files enter our usual data processing pipeline, for which we contract with knowledgeable professionals trained specifically in commercial lease abstraction. Our system ensures you only get 1 version of the abstract no matter who is doing the abstracting.
How does CompStak make money?
Ok, now you understand how CompStak receives and verifies data, but how does CompStak make money?
On CompStak Enterprise we sell data licenses to investors, banks, hedge funds, and other enterprises. CompStak revenue comes from these sales. All enterprise prospects get a free trial and have access to our dedicated sales team. Enterprise clients get unlimited access to a specified commercial real estate database, and analytics and insights tools.
How does CompStak compare to other commercial real estate data providers?
Learn more about how CompStak compares to other CRE data providers:
How do I join CompStak?
If you are a broker, appraiser, or researcher, you can request your free CompStak Exchange account here. We encourage you to use your work email address as it will help us to accelerate the approval process and get you on board as soon as possible. If you are working for a bank, hedge fund, or another enterprise, please set up a demo here and our sales team will be in touch with you shortly.
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