How to Find Comps for Commercial Real Estate with Minimal Effort  

Successful commercial real estate (CRE) deals and businesses rely on accurate data and up-to-date market conditions in order to pinpoint the most advantageous pricing for both parties. Therefore, knowing how to find reliable comps for commercial real estate is one the most crucial aspects of the CRE dealmaking process. 

Why You Need to Get Accurate Comps for Commercial Real Estate 

The first steps to successful and accurate comparables are: 

1. Finding a reliable source of information for your comparables, whether they’re lease or sales comps.  

Before the advent of digital tools and databases, real estate professionals, owners and clients relied on public records, estimates and internal data research. However, this time- and labor-intensive process delivered limited results and made record-keeping a more resource-heavy process. 

But now, a wide range of providers offer commercial property data, as well as tools that eliminate tedious manual research for a commercial property’s price history or commercial property data in order to determine the potential value of your target property.  

If you’re just looking for a property’s sales and price history, then any commercial property data provider with a detailed database will do. But, if you’re in the market for a commercial property data platform that combines extensive property records with agile tools, you’ll need to dig deeper and make sure it’s the right fit for you. That’s because an efficient comps tool provides a wide range of filters and conditions to provide the most accurate pricing estimates possible by taking into account recent sales or leases of commercial properties that are in the vicinity of the building you’re interested in. 

2. Finding a comps tool with complex and accurate filters. 

Some comps tools offer just a few filters, such as: 

• general area/market 
• property size 
• latest sale date 
• property type 

Again, if you’re just looking for a general idea of pricing in the area, then a simple comps tool will get the job done. But, when it comes to thorough analyses, CRE professionals and clients need more flexible options that can offer a wide range of filters to find comps for commercial real estate, such as:  

• square footage of the entire commercial property 
• square footage of the built space 
• exhaustive commercial property sales data 
• year built 
• sales history  
• property class 
• highly customizable location filters — from the city level to specific target areas drawn on the map 

Plus, the more data points you feed into your comps tool, the more accurate your comps result will be, thereby allowing for better accuracy in competitive valuations and pricing. In particular: 

• Owners can correctly price their assets to ensure an optimal profit and a short deal cycle (whether they work with CRE professionals or not). 
• Appraisers can use real estate comps as a stable springboard to establish a basis for appraisals that they can further build upon. 
• CRE professionals need reliable and detailed comps to provide the right guidance to their customers and identify all factors that may contribute to a lower or higher potential listing price, as well as to get a bird’s-eye view of market conditions within their target areas. 

Commercial Property Price History or Comps: Deciding Which One You Need

Before committing to running a comps analysis on your property of interest and researching how to find reliable comps for commercial real estate, consider which type of commercial property sales data you’re looking for:  

1. If you want to get the pulse of the market and see what your property of interest might sell or lease for based on the performance of other nearby properties, then you need a quick and easy-to-use comps tool that will deliver up-to-date results. 

2. If you’re more interested in the price history of your target asset’s commercial property, a comps analysis will not deliver the necessary property data. Rather, CRE professionals can easily look up the building’s commercial property sales data in the property report with a simple property search and dive in for detailed historical data, such as: 

• pricing and ownership history  
• violations 
• upgrades 
• occupancy 
• liens and more  

Up-to-Date Comparables Analysis with Just a Few Clicks 

If you’re looking for a state-of-the-art comps tool that provides accurate results based on the latest sales and lease data from actual, recent transactions closed in your area, then the comps tool that CommercialEdge offers could be your best fit. That’s because it provides a host of filters and property characteristics to consider, all while being easy to use and fast. 

Whether you’re an owner, investor, commercial broker, lease manager or any other type of CRE professional — or even a client — the comps tool from CommercialEdge provides you with accurate comparables and market overviews. Just search for your target property by address or parcel ID and then create a highly precise list of comparable properties by using the wide range of available filters, such as: 

• commercial property sales history  
• commercial property data 
• property type and building class 
• lot size and building square footage 

This then delivers a list of properties that can be used in your comps analysis based on your selected criteria. Any buildings that don’t match your targeted query exactly can simply be removed from your property list to further finetune your results. Or, in the event that there aren’t enough properties in your list for an accurate analysis, simply try broadening your filter selection, search criteria or target area. 

Then, once you’re satisfied with the properties in your comparables list, view and analyze the: 

• median price of similar properties 
• lowest and highest recorded sale prices  
• price per square foot  

Finally, the tool will also deliver a valuation of your property based on the median price per square foot resulting from your comps list, along with a host of other valuable information. In the end, CommercialEdge’s tool will save you significant time and resources, thereby freeing CRE professionals to focus on other business needs.