Real Estate & Property Data
Every property, mortgage, and tax assessment on record
The Property Data Ecosystem
These companies aggregate and sell data about properties, homeowners, mortgages, and real estate transactions. Every property you’ve owned, every mortgage you’ve held, every tax assessment, every permit — all of it is collected, packaged, and sold to insurers, lenders, investors, and marketers. The property data industry is dominated by a handful of companies that have consolidated through billions of dollars in acquisitions, creating vast databases that touch virtually every real estate transaction in America.
Major Property Data Companies
Cotality (formerly CoreLogic)
What they are: America’s largest property data company. Taken private by Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners on June 4, 2021 for approximately $6 billion ($80 per share).[1] The acquisition followed a competitive bidding war that began in July 2020, with CoStar Group initially offering $7 billion before withdrawing its bid.[1] In March 2025, CoreLogic rebranded to Cotality with the tagline “Intelligence beyond bounds,” reflecting an expansion beyond its mortgage industry origins into comprehensive property data and analytics. The rebrand is widely viewed as the final phase of the company’s reorganization following the 2021 private equity transaction.[2][3]
What data they have: Property data on virtually every U.S. property, tenant screening reports, insurance analytics, and real estate analytics. Claims to be the nation’s single largest aggregator of tenant screening data with access to hundreds of millions of records.[4] Also operates the Trestle MLS data aggregation platform, providing standardized access to listing data across multiple MLSs via a single schema.[5] Operations span the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, Germany, and Brazil.[2]
Tenant screening issues: CoreLogic’s SafeRent Solutions subsidiary faced a $2.275 million settlement in Louis v. SafeRent Solutions (November 2024) after plaintiffs demonstrated that its algorithmic “SafeRent Score” disproportionately harmed housing voucher recipients, including Black and Hispanic applicants. (See Employment & Tenant Screening for full details.)
ATTOM Data Solutions
What they are: Leading provider of comprehensive U.S. property data. Founded in 1996 as RealtyTrac, originally a consumer-focused foreclosure listings platform. Acquired in 2011 by Renovo Capital and Rosewood Private Investments.[7] Rebranded to ATTOM Data Solutions in July 2016 alongside the launch of the ATTOM Data Warehouse, pivoting from consumer e-commerce to enterprise data licensing.[6] Sold to Lovell Minnick Partners (private equity) in January 2019.[8] In 2022, ATTOM sold its RealtyTrac and Homefacts consumer websites to Nations Info, completing the shift to a pure-play data licensing business.[9] Annual revenue of approximately $29 million (2025).[11]
What data they have: Data on 155+ million U.S. residential and commercial properties across 3,000+ counties. Portfolio includes tax assessments, sales, valuations, boundaries, permits, schools, demographics, foreclosure insights, rental values, and risk data, all validated through a 20-step process and linked by a unique ATTOM ID. The ATTOM API covers 99% of the American population.[10]
Who buys it: Underwriting, automated valuation modeling (AVMs), risk modeling, insurance workflows, proptech apps, government analyses, and AI systems.
ICE Mortgage Technology (formerly Black Knight)
What they are: Acquired by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE, the NYSE parent company) for approximately $11.9 billion, completed in September 2023 after a 16-month regulatory review.[12] The acquisition follows ICE’s earlier purchases of Ellie Mae (2020), Simplifile (2019), and MERS (2018), creating a vertically integrated “life-of-loan” platform spanning origination through servicing.[12]
What data they have: Mortgage data, property data, and servicing technology. The combined ICE Mortgage Technology platform automates the mortgage process from consumer engagement through loan registration.
Antitrust: The FTC alleged the merger would combine the two top mortgage technology providers, driving up costs, reducing innovation, and limiting lenders’ choices. Under the consent order (finalized November 3, 2023), Black Knight was required to divest its Optimal Blue (product and pricing engine) and Empower (loan origination system) businesses to Constellation Web Solutions. ICE faces a 10-year prior approval requirement before acquiring any LOS business, and a 10-year prior notice requirement for any PPE business acquisition.[13]
First American Data & Analytics (DataTree)
What they are: Subsidiary of First American Financial Corporation, a Fortune 500 title insurance and settlement services company. Provides property and ownership data, title records, and real estate analytics through its DataTree platform.[14]
What data they have: Title plant data, property ownership records, comparable sales data, and building permits.
885 million record data breach (May 2019): In May 2019, security journalist Brian Krebs discovered that First American’s website had exposed approximately 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, including bank account numbers, bank statements, mortgage records, tax documents, wire transfer receipts, Social Security numbers, and photos of driver’s licenses. The exposure was caused by an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability in the company’s EaglePro application: anyone with a web browser could access sensitive documents simply by modifying a URL. The vulnerability had existed since at least March 2017.[15]
Enforcement: The New York Department of Financial Services fined First American Title Insurance Company $1 million for cybersecurity regulation violations stemming from the breach.[16] The SEC separately charged First American Financial with disclosure controls violations, as the company’s information security personnel had first spotted the vulnerability in January 2019 but failed to fix it or notify senior management until the breach became public in May, resulting in a $487,616 penalty.[17]
PropertyShark (Yardi Systems)
What they are: Acquired by Yardi Systems in 2010.[18] Provides commercial and residential property data, ownership records, comparables, and building permits. PropertyShark has grown to over 4 million registered users and is considered an essential property research tool for the U.S. commercial real estate industry.[18] Yardi also operates Yardi Matrix, a separate data analytics division providing market-level intelligence on multifamily, student housing, office, industrial, and self-storage sectors.
Real Estate Marketplaces & Their Data Practices
Zillow Group
What they are: Major real estate marketplace operating Zillow, Trulia, HotPads, and StreetEasy.
Privacy compliance review (December 2025): BBB National Programs’ Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) found that enhanced notice for interest-based advertising was not consistently provided across Zillow Group’s desktop and mobile properties. The review identified broken links, missing privacy notices, and inadequate disclosures about interest-based advertising. Third-party collection of precise location data had occurred through the Zillow mobile app for behavioral advertising, though Zillow confirmed this activity had stopped before the review began. Zillow Group subsequently added “Ad Choices” links to all four brands’ websites and mobile apps and revised its Privacy Notice to explain interest-based advertising practices more prominently.[19]
Follow Up Boss controversy (November 2025): Zillow’s new privacy policy for Follow Up Boss (a CRM platform acquired in 2023) created categories of “mutual customer data” and “agent-only customer data.” Under the new policy, if a consumer has a Zillow account and the account information matches data in an agent’s Follow Up Boss CRM, that data becomes “mutual customer data” which Zillow may use to contact the consumer directly. Critics noted that because virtually every homebuyer in America has a Zillow account, the policy effectively turns agents’ private client databases into shared data. The change was made to support Zillow’s new “Zillow Pro” offering, which unifies Follow Up Boss, My Agent, and Agent Profiles.[20]
CoStar Group
What they are: The leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics, and online marketplaces. Founded 1987. Publicly traded (NASDAQ: CSGP). Total revenue of $2.74 billion in 2024 (up 11% YoY), marking its 55th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth.[21]
What data they have: The largest and most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information globally. Operates CoStar (flagship commercial database, $1.02 billion in 2024 revenue), Apartments.com ($1.07 billion in 2024 revenue), LoopNet (commercial listings), Homes.com (residential, acquired April 2021 for $156 million), and STR (hospitality analytics).[21]
Matterport acquisition: Completed the acquisition of Matterport on February 28, 2025 for $1.6 billion, adding the world’s leading 3D digital twin platform, with over 14 million spaces and 50 billion square feet digitized across 177 countries, to CoStar’s real estate data ecosystem.[22]
Specialized Property Data Providers
LightBox
What they are: Commercial real estate information and technology platform. Registered in the California CPPA data broker registry. Has completed 12 acquisitions to date, most recently acquiring UrbanFootprint in June 2025, adding geospatial analytics, climate risk modeling, infrastructure investment analysis, and community resilience data to its platform.[24]
What data they have: Unifies and standardizes nationwide data from 10,000+ sources. Combines real estate data analytics including building footprints, tax parcels, geospatial, zoning, and environmental building data in a single platform. Includes the industry-leading Environmental Data Resources (EDR) database and PZR zoning reports, with over 70 years of zoning expertise.[23]
PropertyRadar
What they are: Property data and lead generation platform focused on real estate-centric businesses and government agencies. Registered in the California CPPA data broker registry.
What data they have: Nationwide access to 150+ million properties with 285+ search criteria across 10 categories, including property type, ownership, location, and financials. Started as a local California tool for investors seeking foreclosure data. Uses AI and machine learning to validate, standardize, and enhance property records. Integrates with 2,000+ third-party solutions.
Connected Investors
What they are: Real estate investing software platform offering skip tracing, property data, and investor networking. Registered in the California CPPA data broker registry.
Skip tracing services: Provides ownership-level contact information including phone numbers, email addresses, occupational info, and social media links. Offers 2,500 skip traces in the $99/month plan and 5,000 skip traces in the $999/year plan.
MLS Data Aggregation
Over 600 Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) operate across North America. A growing ecosystem of aggregators and portals buys, licenses, and redistributes this data:
The RESO Web API standard now serves over 1 million MLS subscribers nationwide, establishing a unified technical framework for real estate data exchange.[26]