What are the best CRE prospecting tools in 2026?

Which tool is best for each prospecting job?

Each prospecting job has a clear leader, and no tool leads more than two. For building, tenant and lease expiration data in the US, CoStar. For lease comps, CompStak and CoStar. For owners, debt and the people behind an LLC, Reonomy, Crexi Intelligence and ProspectNow. For business contacts, Apollo, ZoomInfo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. For pipeline, Buildout CRM, AscendixRE or Salesforce.

For finding the occupiers that would take a specific property and tracking when they will need space, Scayled. For a daily tenant rep brief in Seattle, BrokerHQ. For retail foot traffic and trade areas, Placer.ai. A typical producing broker runs one data tool, one contact or occupier tool and one CRM, and adds a fourth only when a specific job is costing deals.

What is CoStar good and bad at for prospecting?

CoStar is the strongest US source for who occupies a building and when their lease ends, and the weakest for standing out, which is why brokers compare alternatives to CoStar. Its tenant data shows a company's locations, lease expirations where reported, and contacts for some decision makers and their brokers. That makes it the default tool for expiry prospecting and for the research behind a pitch or a valuation.

The drawbacks are structural. Every subscriber in your market pulls the same expiring tenants in the same quarter, so those tenants hear from many brokers at once. Coverage is thinner in small multi-tenant parks, secondary markets and owner-occupied buildings, which have no lease to record. CoStar does not publish its prices; seats are quoted per firm and are among the larger line items in a broker's budget.

Which tools are best for finding property owners?

Reonomy, Crexi Intelligence and ProspectNow are the main owner tools, and they win listings rather than fill space. Reonomy, part of Altus Group since 2021, covers ownership, debt, sales history and the people behind owning entities. Crexi Intelligence offers owner contacts and portfolios, added bulk enrichment of address lists in February 2026, and added tenant data in June 2026.

ProspectNow, owned by Buildout since 2022, covers owner data and flags properties likely to sell or refinance. County assessor and recorder sites give the same raw ownership facts for free, one parcel at a time. Use these tools for investment sales and listing pitches; for a vacancy, the person you need is the occupier who would move in, not the owner.

Are Apollo and ZoomInfo good for CRE prospecting?

They are good for finding a contact once you know the company, and weak at telling you which companies to contact. Both filter by industry, headcount, location and job title, both return emails and phone numbers, and both include sequencing for sending at volume. Apollo has a free tier, which makes it the usual first contact tool for an independent broker.

Neither knows which building a company occupies, how much space it uses, or whether your property suits its operations. A metro-wide list of logistics companies produces a metro-wide email, and recipients can tell. Sending high volume from a new domain also puts your deliverability at risk. Use them to fill in contacts on a shortlist you built for a reason, not to build the shortlist.

Which newer prospecting tools are worth a look in 2026?

Three newer tools are worth knowing, each built for a narrower job than the incumbents. BrokerHQ sends tenant rep brokers a daily brief from public records, SEC filings, licences and job postings, and launched covering Seattle and the Puget Sound. Plotzy speeds up parcel, owner contact and zoning research for brokers and land teams.

Scayled is occupier-first and starts from a property, answering three questions: who would take it, who decides there, and who is about to need space. A Listing Scan covers every business around the address with the decider and a drafted email for each, and a Target Scan finds businesses anywhere in the country whose operations fit the property's size, use and type. Every occupier found is re-checked every two weeks for hiring, contract wins, new sites, funding and lease events, and everything stays in your own Occupier Database.

Scayled works in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the UAE and other countries. It does not provide comps, ownership or valuations, so it sits next to a data tool rather than replacing one.

How should a team build its prospecting stack in 2026?

Start from the deal type you do most, then add one tool per job. For landlord rep and listings: CoStar or CompStak for pricing, LoopNet and Crexi for exposure, Scayled for outbound to the occupiers most likely to take the space, and a CRM. For investment sales: Reonomy, Crexi Intelligence or ProspectNow, plus a CRM. For tenant rep: CoStar tenant data, LinkedIn Sales Navigator alerts, and movement tracking from Scayled or, in Seattle, BrokerHQ (see BrokerHQ alternatives).

Test before you commit, and judge any AI tool for CRE brokers on the same terms. Scayled's 3-day free trial at scayled.com/start comes with 4 scans, and the Pro, Team and Market Plan details sit on scayled.com/pricing. Where the need is one property rather than a pipeline, The Campaign at scayled.com/campaign builds the list and writes the emails for a single payment, from US$449.