Real Estate Databases: Which Type Answers Which Question

Key Takeaways

• Real estate databases come in four types: county public records, the MLS, commercial data platforms (plus data vendors) and market research sets, and no single one holds everything.
• County assessors, recorders and court clerks hold the original documents behind most property data, and the county usually wins when a platform and the county disagree.
• PropStream plans start at $99 a month with a 7-day trial and 50 free leads, DealMachine plans start at $99 a month, and PropertyRadar's Solo plan is $119 billed monthly.
• Goliath costs $1,499, $2,999 or $7,499 a month, builds lists from property signals such as pre-foreclosure, probate and tax delinquency, and is data and software that does not sell leads.
• ATTOM, Regrid and Reonomy deliver bulk data and APIs for building your own software, usually through a sales quote.

Goliath Data publishes this guide, and Goliath is one of the services compared. Prices and features were checked on each company's own site on November 5, 2026, and can change.

Real estate databases come in four types: county public records, the MLS, commercial data platforms and market research sets. No single one holds everything. County records are the source for ownership and tax status, the MLS is the source for listing activity, commercial platforms stitch those into something searchable, and research sets tell you about a market rather than a house.

So start with your question. "Who owns 412 Elm?" and "Are prices falling in this ZIP?" need different tools.

What are the four types of real estate databases?

Commercial platforms and data vendors are both commercial, so we split them by how you use them. One has a screen, the other usually has a pipe.

Why are county records the source most databases start from?

Your county assessor, recorder and court clerk hold the original documents behind most property data: deeds, tax status, liens and many foreclosure filings. Search tools vary widely. The Maricopa County Assessor, for one, offers a public search by parcel and address. Other counties ask you to visit a counter.

The catch is scale. Checking one address is easy, while watching a county every week by hand is a job. And each county has its own format, which is why tools that combine county records across states exist at all.

Use county records as your referee. When a platform and the county disagree, the county usually wins, though its posting can also lag behind the event itself.

What does the MLS database hold, and who can use it?

The National Association of Realtors describes the MLS as "a collaboration among real estate professionals to share local property listing data." Its model rules tie participation to a real estate license or appraiser credential, and each MLS sets its own terms.

If you are not licensed, working with an agent is the usual path. Expect listing history and sold data here, which makes the MLS strong for pricing, and weak for owners who have never listed. Our guide to comparable sales tools covers the workarounds.

Which commercial platforms do investors use to work lists?

This is where most investors and wholesalers live. Goliath comes first in the list below on neutral criteria (signal coverage, source kept on each record, outreach built in), and it costs far more than the others, so the fit question is real.

• Goliath. Lists are built from property signals such as pre-foreclosure filings, probate, tax delinquency, equity and tenure, absentee ownership and expired or withdrawn listings. Each record keeps the source behind it. Refresh timing varies by source and market. A CRM, dialer and texting are built in. Pricing is $1,499, $2,999 or $7,499 a month, with no free trial. It is data and software, and it does not sell leads.
• PropStream. It reports 160M+ properties, 165+ filters and 20 lead lists, with plans from $99 a month and a 7-day trial with 50 free leads. A strong starting point for a solo operator on a budget.
• DealMachine. It reports 150 million properties and 240 million people records, with plans from $99 a month, plus direct mail and driving for dollars built in. Handy if you find deals from the car.
• PropertyRadar. Its Solo plan is $119 billed monthly with a 5-day free trial. It says it updates daily and backtests against county records, and it grew out of foreclosure data. Multi-channel campaigns are part of the pitch.

Which data vendors suit people who build their own software?

If you want data inside your own CRM or model, you want a file or an API, not a dashboard.

ATTOM reports 160M+ U.S. properties and delivers through API, bulk data and cloud. Regrid focuses on parcel data, offering bulk files and APIs, and its schema labels fields whose values come from authorities such as county assessors, USPS, FEMA and the Census Bureau. For commercial property, Reonomy cites 53M+ commercial properties and focuses on finding owners behind LLCs.

Most of these talk to you through a sales team, especially at volume. Budget time for mapping fields and cleaning records, because a raw feed is an ingredient, not a meal.

Which free research sets help you pick a market?

These are the real estate databases people forget, partly because none of them will hand you an owner's name. They help you decide where to work.

• U.S. Census Bureau. The American Community Survey has run since 2005 and covers housing, income and more at local levels. Its housing vacancy survey reported a national homeowner vacancy rate of 1.2 percent and rental vacancy of 7.6 percent for the third quarter of 2026.
• FHFA. The House Price Index measures single-family values using data back to the mid-1970s, from all 50 states and over 400 American cities.
• Redfin. Its Data Center offers downloadable housing market data.

A sensible use: rank three target counties by price trend and vacancy before paying for owner data in any of them.

How do you choose a real estate database for your work?

Four questions sort most of it out.

1. What decision does this record support? Picking a market, pricing an offer and reaching an owner are three different purchases.
2. How fresh does it need to be? A pre-foreclosure list loses value faster than a parcel map. Ask vendors for refresh timing by source and by your county, not a national average.
3. Can you see where a record came from? A source link saves you a trip to the recorder when something looks off.
4. What happens after the search? If you need a CRM and a dialer anyway, count them in the price comparison.

Then run a test nobody can fake. Pull 25 addresses you already know well from your market. Check owner name, tax status and last sale against the county. Whichever database gets closest in your county has earned a longer look, whatever its national record count says.

What rules apply when you use owner data?

Most of these databases will give you a way to reach people, and that brings rules along. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule guidance covers calling numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. Whether a call or text about buying a house counts as telemarketing is a question for your lawyer, so treat your outreach as covered. This is not legal advice.

If foreclosure data is your main interest, see our notes on free foreclosure databases, then compare them to the paid sets above.