It’s no secret that rapidly expanding real estate data capabilities have transformed the enterprise real estate world. However, what many leaders in adjacent industries don’t realize is how property intelligence will transform their decision making processes as well.
The possibilities that property data introduces go far beyond improving property search and empowering real estate professionals to find deals faster. Every industry that interacts with real estate on any level can optimize its daily operations, enable its sales organizations, and open new paths to profitability. All they have to do is choose a real estate API that gives them seamless access to data.
In this guide, we’ll explore how business leaders can expect a real estate API to empower their service offerings, connect them with more profitable contracts, and streamline their operations.
Speed of access will increase overall profits
The defining characteristic of a valuable API is that it puts data exactly where it’s needed, as soon as it’s needed. That may be in your CRM, but it can also be on your website or in your applications.
Before the advent of real estate APIs, data access required someone to export data, clean and format it, and then manually import it. This was a slow, tedious process that prohibited certain data uses. But now businesses can access data seamlessly and instantantly without any manual input or initiation.
These improvements don’t simply create greater ease of use for your team. They also allow you to create, expand, and empower your product offerings so that your business becomes more valuable for clients and consumers. The commercial real estate platform Crexi is a perfect example of this benefit. By leveraging BatchData’s API, Crexi was able to offer users a previously non-existent entity resolution process that only took a few seconds compared to the 30-minute process users were accustomed to.
However, real estate businesses and platforms aren’t the only beneficiaries of the speed that comes with a real estate API. Insurance companies, delivery services, and any other company that deals with addresses and property information will see their service quality improve exponentially with the introduction of quality, on-demand real estate data. Insurance companies will be able to make more informed decisions, delivery companies will be able to identify deliverable addresses faster, and billing companies will be able to connect with debtors more reliably.
Empowered decision making creates better outcomes
Modern property data APIs offer an astounding breadth and depth of data that extends far beyond simple address verification and right-party contact information.
BatchData’s API has more than 300 data points for each of the +150 million US properties in our database. Arguably the most important of these is access to real estate listings. This information empowers property valuation and comping processes by giving businesses access to the exact sales price of real estate listings.
By leveraging BatchData’s API, businesses can also obtain instant access to a wealth of detailed property information, financial insights, and owner demographic data, including:
- Owner’s net worth, income, and discretionary income
- Household size
- Structure details and build materials
- Tax information
- Tax default pre-foreclosure, and other financial distress factors
- Owner profile and portfolio information
Arming teams with this information optimizes the purchasing decision process. Rather than relying on legacy data points that often require decision makers to make educated guesses, real estate APIs allow teams to evaluate deals and contracts on a case-by-case basis. The result is increased profit, no matter what industry the business serves.
Unique data points fuel unique use cases
Depth and breadth of data are essential in the modern real estate investing space and its adjacent industries. However, many businesses require additional, more unique information to make profitable decisions. Partnering with the right real estate data provider is often the only way to get this information without extensive manual research.
Examples include:
- Enhancing underwriting accuracy with instant access to property information
- Monitoring the pulse of a market with real-time updates on MLS listings
- Control operational costs by metering data needs with advanced data warehousing
In short, integrating with an API to access real estate information is transforming the way businesses operate, whether they’re directly involved in the real estate industry or not. Businesses that are making the early transition to interface with quality data are bringing more power to their operations and more value to their customers.
Targeted marketing efforts protect your brand
Crexi’s client-facing use of right-party contact information isn’t the only way a business can benefit from phone numbers and email addresses. Hyper accurate contact information is becoming increasingly critical to businesses of all types as the FCC and carriers crack down on high-output calling operations.
While a wide-net approach has been effective in the past, it is no longer viable. Businesses that call too many wrong or disconnected numbers risk having their numbers flagged as spam at the carrier level, even if their business practices and goals are completely legitimate. Therefore, a real estate API is a critical sales enablement tool, even if its only purpose is to leverage property records to fill a CRM with current phone numbers.
Increase ROI with strategic marketing campaigns
The importance of real estate data extends beyond right-party contact information and maintaining proper relationships with carriers. Businesses that enhance their CRM records with the detailed property, owner, and financial information discussed earlier can create more effective marketing campaigns.
These benefits can extend to the segmentation of calling lists, the development of messaging and scripts, the design of mailers, and even the assignment of canvassing routes. Whether a business is acquiring real estate, advertising insurance policies, or simply selling products and services door-to-door, accurate data will almost always create more success.
Choosing the right API for your needs
Clearly, having access to in-depth, high-quality property data is essential. However, with so many data providers claiming to be the most reliable, finding a trustworthy source can be challenging. What can you do as a business leader to ensure you’re powering your CRM and applications with accurate data? The following four factors will guide you to a provider you’ll be happy to partner with.
The first is reputable data sources. A data provider is only as good as its sources, and if they’re single source or cobbled together to form a patchwork of coverage, the provider won’t give you the accuracy, quality, depth, or coverage you need to elevate your operations.
The second factor is an in-house data science team. If a provider is simply passing data through without cleaning or enriching it, you’ll ingest data that hasn’t been formatted or checked for accuracy. The result is distracting, useless data in your applications or your CRM. In worst case scenarios, incorrectly formatted data can even break applications, bringing your operations to a standstill.
The third factor to look for is entity resolution capabilities. Without accurate contact information and the ability to identify LLC owners, your commercial real estate (CRE) capabilities will be severely limited. Whether you need this information to empower a CRE platform like Crexi or you need more reliable ways to contact property owners, your operations will benefit from this data.
Finally, the fourth factor to look for is advanced data capabilities. Many large-scale data providers simply sell data. However, in the era of big data and machine learning, standard data will no longer meet the needs of sophisticated businesses. Data that’s considered cutting-edge today may be considered standard in a year, and you need a data provider you can trust to stay at the forefront.
Key takeaways
Unrestricted, immediate access to data is the future of every industry in and around real estate. With the advent of AI assistants and algorithm-based decision making, having on-demand data from a reliable provider will become one of the primary factors that separates industry leaders from the rest of the pack.
This pattern is already becoming evident in the real estate investing industry. Businesses of all sizes, from solopreneurs to enterprise holding companies, are ingesting more data rates than ever and turning larger profits as a result. Unparalleled access to property data has allowed them to make strategic decisions faster, instantly identify worthwhile investments, and improve their marketing campaigns.
If the data points of interest that these APIs provide are transforming the real estate industry, just imagine what they can do for industries that don’t subsist on this depth of data. So far, the results have been astounding, and we believe they will continue to increase as businesses find new, creative ways to leverage data.
To see what this data transformation can look like in your organization, click here to request a meeting with our data team. They’ll show you exactly what kind of data you can expect to receive from BatchData and how it can transform your business operations.
