For years, commercial real estate brokers have pieced together a fragmented stack of tools to do the basic work of their job. Comp research in one system, ownership lookups in another, contact data pulled from a third. The process was slow, error-prone, and never quite complete. That is the problem DealGround was built to solve.
According to Dan Mosher, CEO and co-founder of DealGround, the old workflow was manual by design, and not by choice. “Typically these brokers have had five or six different systems that they used to do what the function is that we’re allowing them to do today,” he said. “Now they can just do it in one, and they can exit out of some of these other systems forever.”
The Research Burden Brokers Have Been Living With
Building a comp set used to mean logging into CoStar or Crexi, manually pulling deals that seemed relevant, and then spending additional time second-guessing the data because brokers knew how it was collected. The primary data source for those platforms was phone calls to brokers asking them to confirm cap rates and transaction details, a process that was inconsistent at best.
“Many brokers ignore these phone calls,” Mosher explained. “Some give the caller the wrong information. And then those same brokers go to that very database to look for comp information, knowing how they handled it when they were on the other end.” The result was a cycle of unreliable data that required everyone to do extra validation work on top of already time-consuming research.
Ownership research was no different. A broker trying to track down a property owner would start with an LLC name, look it up in a Secretary of State database, identify the individual behind the entity, and then separately track down a phone number or email. Each step was its own manual task, each one an opportunity for error or a dead end.
What Consolidation Actually Looks Like in Practice
DealGround brings property intelligence, ownership data, and comp research into a single AI-powered platform. Brokers who specialize in a particular tenant type, for example a 7-Eleven or McDonald’s expert, can now run a filtered list of every matching property in a given state that has not sold in three years, pull the owner contact details for all of them, and move into outreach without switching systems.
“That process of identifying the location, knowing there’s a certain tenant there, is again a very manual process historically, and now they can do it in a few minutes,” Mosher said.
The downstream impact on research time has been significant. Brokers are no longer spending hours cross-referencing multiple platforms, re-validating data they are not sure they can trust, or chasing down contact information through government databases. They get to the part of the job that actually moves deals forward.
The Cost Case Is Also Real
Beyond consolidation, the economics are hard to ignore. Mosher noted that DealGround is priced at roughly a tenth of the cost of CoStar, while offering data that is more current and collected through a more reliable methodology. Rather than relying on broker self-reporting over the phone, DealGround sources comp data from offering memoranda, which Mosher describes as far more accurate because brokers treat those documents carefully.
“The offering memorandum is highly likely to be correct versus a phone call to the broker asking them what they closed at,” he said.
For brokers weighing whether to consolidate, the combination of lower cost, higher data quality, and reduced tool sprawl makes the case straightforward.
The Deals Being Missed
One of the less obvious costs of the old system was not just time lost, but deals that never happened. If a broker could not track down the right contact for an owner, that conversation never started. “The chances that there was a potential deal to be done that never got done because they were not able to find the right contact information is certainly real,” Mosher said.
With a unified platform, that problem largely disappears. Brokers using DealGround now have access to over 160 million properties with validated ownership and contact data, reducing the chances of a dead end before a conversation even starts.
About DealGround: DealGround is an AI-powered intelligence command center for commercial real estate professionals. The platform brings together property intelligence, ownership research, and comp data to help brokers generate qualified leads and move faster from prospecting to closed deals. For more information, visit www.dealground.com.
Disclaimer: This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.
Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.
