Imagine predicting exactly which homeowners in your farm area will sell their property in the next 12 months. It used to take a mind reader (or a lot of luck) to get that kind of inside intel on your local real estate market, but now you just need some big data and the right predictive analytics company to interpret it.
These companies shift through millions of data points, using smart algorithms to gain invaluable insights into the real estate market, and can even make stunningly accurate predictions.
The residential real estate industry is quickly catching up to the commercial side, which has been using big data for ages. In fact, I believe that 2023 will be the year that just about every residential agent, team, and broker will start looking for a real estate artificial intelligence (AI) or data analytics tool. In preparation, I reviewed the vast data analytics marketplace and narrowed down the field to my top 10 favorite cutting-edge companies that are—maybe, just maybe—completely changing the game.
Top 10 Real Estate Predictive Analytics Companies of 2023
| Company | Best For |
|---|---|
| Smartzip | Seller leads |
| Offrs | Highly-qualified seller leads + lead conversion through referral network ROOF |
| Catalyze AI | Leads related to inherited property |
| Likely.AI | Distressed property leads + AI-generated copy |
| Top Producer’s Smart Targeting | All-in-one lead generation & CRM solution |
| Addressable’s SmartCopy | AI-generated real estate marketing copy |
| AirDNA | Data for short-term rental buyers |
| TopHap | Comprehensive market data analysis |
| Tomi.ai | Ad spend optimization |
| Revaluate | Optimizing a large sphere of influence |
Data Analytics & AI in Real Estate
As tech startups and major companies alike vie to be the next industry “disrupter,” it’s tempting to ignore the entire phenomenon and continue doing business as you’ve always done. But I’d argue it’s time to take a look at what data analytics is doing in real estate, and how, in very simple and intuitive ways, artificial intelligence can work for you.
What Is Predictive Analytics?
A predictive analytics company pulls together millions (if not billions) of data points from multiple sources. In real estate, common data sources include:
Algorithms utilize this historical data to predict events in the future. This forecasting can influence, and even direct, strategic decisions.
How Does This Impact the Real Estate Industry … & You?
Just like that story when Target knew a high school student was pregnant before her parents did, big data is extremely powerful and frighteningly accurate. But, you can make it work for you in your real estate business with a company that knows how to harness it, like the 10 on our list.
Imagine if you had a list of homeowners in your farm area who were identified (via predictive analytics) to be highly likely to sell their homes in the next 12 to 18 months. Think of all of the time, energy, and money you could save by marketing specifically to those homeowners.
Let me give you some actual data to consider. One of our top picks, Offrs, provides 30 guaranteed leads in a chosen ZIP code every month, and those leads come with an astounding 72% prediction accuracy rate. Assuming that prediction rate, each month you’d have about 20 solid leads. The average listing commission is over $12,000. So if you convert half of your leads, that’s $120,000.
As Offrs says: It’s not magic, it’s math.
What’s the Difference Between PA & Data Analytics?
You’ll notice that some of the companies on this list are data analytics companies, without that fancy predictive claim. Data analytics is a much more far-reaching term that encompasses predictive analytics (PA). Data analytics companies collect and analyze data, but they’re not in the business of making predictions.
Predictive analytics companies use data to say, “Hey, based on our data analysis, there’s a 72% chance that number 4 Privet Drive is going to sell this year.” Other companies on this list offer data analytics products designed to help your buyers and sellers make better decisions about investments or short-term rental properties, for example.
The Close Recommends
If you said to me, “I’ve got $1,000 to spend—which company should I sign with?” I’d say Smartzip. Though each of the real estate data analytics companies on our list offers unique value, Smartzip stands out.
Why? I’m impressed by Smartzip’s customer service, intuitive dashboard, and the quality of leads. In a roller coaster of a market, Smartzip’s value is easy to see.
Smartzip
Smartzip claims they can predict the homes that will sell in a particular neighborhood in the upcoming 12 to 18 months with up to 72% accuracy. A bold promise, but thus far, one they claim they’re delivering on.
By combing through consumer data (from places like credit card companies), market data (from places like your MLS), and demographic data, they predict which homeowners in your targeted region are most likely to sell.
Realtors who sign up with Smartzip immediately get access to the Smartzip customer relationship manager (CRM), populated with “Smart Data” for your areas. Essentially, this is a list of all the property owners in your targeted area, ranked by how likely they are to sell their home in the next year and a half.
Armed with this information, you can focus your outreach on only the most likely sellers, saving you time and money on marketing efforts and making your lead conversations more meaningful and fruitful.
Pros & Cons
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Is SmartZip the Future of Real Estate Prospecting?
Smartzip Pricing
The company’s prices are based on the size of the geographic area you’re targeting and start at $350 per month with a 12-month contract. Most Smartzip customers report spending around $1,000 per month.
Smartzip: Is It Right for You?
If you’re already investing heavily in real estate farming and seller-lead nurturing, Smartzip is an excellent real estate predictive analytics tool for you. Since leads from Smartzip tend to take a little longer to nurture than traditional listing leads, you will need to have a solid keep-in-touch strategy. If you’ve got a good lead nurturing game in place, Smartzip is absolutely worth considering.
Offrs
While Offrs is owned by the same company as Smartzip, the actual product is very different. Both are built on the same Smart Data platform, but Offrs customers also have access to sophisticated and automated marketing and nurturing tools.
Plus, the Offrs Roof referral system is an added bonus. For a 25% referral fee, Offrs’ call center and email marketing team will initiate at least 30 touches in the first 90 days, starting immediately when a lead comes through. This makes the nurturing process even less of a lift, especially since about 67% of clients go with the first agent they speak with.
If you need automated marketing services, this is a platform you should absolutely consider. With the integration of the referral network, ROOF, and its ability to qualify and convert your leads, this could be an all-in-one solution to build your business.
Pros & Cons
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Offrs Review: Are AI & Predictive Analytics the Future of Real Estate?
Offrs Pricing
You get 30 guaranteed leads from one ZIP code for $299 per month. This includes predictive sellers, ad budget, a customized territory builder, and a lead capture page. If you want a larger target area, spring for the premium plan, which is five ZIP codes for $599 per month. Offrs does not require a contract.
Offrs: Is It Right for You?
If you need automated marketing services, this is a platform you should absolutely consider. If you don’t need the more specialized lead types or automated marketing features, you’re probably better off going with Smartzip, with their upgraded CRM and user interface.
Catalyze AI
Every year, hundreds of thousands of properties are inherited. Catalyze AI helps sort through all of the data points (over 400 million of them) to narrow these properties down to excellent leads. So excellent, they boast that four out of 10 predicted leads sell within 12 months. Catalyze AI estimates this market represents $77 billion in property value each year.
I like that Catalyze AI offers leads within a 20-mile radius of your search area and that you can pay based on the value of the property: one monthly rate for properties valued above $1 million and one for below. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, these leads are exclusive, which makes them pretty darn valuable.
Pros & Cons
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Catalyze AI Pricing
The two-tier pricing at Catalyze AI is relatively unique. The first tier is for properties valued over $1 million dollars, which is $450 per month. For $360 per month, you get leads on properties valued under $1 million. There are no contracts so agents can subscribe month to month.
Catalyze AI: Is It Right for You?
Inherited property leads are fairly niche, and it takes someone with strong interpersonal skills to convert them, especially if the new property owner is recently bereft. It will also take patience and strong follow-up. That being said, this is a really strong market and the leads are local, not outrageously expensive, highly probable to convert, and exclusive. Because it’s month-to-month, it’s definitely worth checking out Catalyze AI; it’s a company in the PA space that we’re excited to watch.
Likely.AI
Likely.AI is similar to Offrs and Smartzip in that it uses millions of data points to predict who is going to be selling a home in the relatively near future. It has a specialized focus on distressed properties, giving agents an opportunity to offer options to a homeowner who may need them. You can also track off-market sellers and prospect through your own integrated CRM, but it is already fully embedded in Follow Up Boss.
What sets Likely.AI apart is their integration of ChatGPT. This AI platform creates content for email, newsletters, texts and more. Likely.AI promises a lot, but the numbers are pretty powerful: The company says it predicted $865 billion worth of home value in the past 12 months alone.
Pros & Cons
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Likey.AI Pricing
After the free two-week trial, you can subscribe month to month or annually (where you’ll get two months free). It’s $89 per month for 2,000 contacts, $199 per month for 5,000 contacts, and $599 per month for 15,000 contacts. In all tiers you get:
- Likely Seller Predictions
- Distressed Predictions
- Contact Enrichment
- Contact Monitoring 24/7
- Automations
- ChatGPT Content
- Follow Up Boss App
- Playbooks
Likely.AI: Is It Right for You?
This company is doing a lot of things well, including its partnership with Follow Up Boss. However, converting distressed properties takes a special kind of agent, one with excellent interpersonal skills. All that being said, it’s reasonably priced, has a generous free trial, and comes with some exciting AI integrations, so it’s definitely worth a closer look.
Follow Up Boss Review (2023): Pricing, Features, Pros & Cons
Top Producer’s Smart Targeting
While Top Producer’s predictive analytics product, called Smart Targeting, isn’t far from what other PA companies are doing (in fact, their data is supplied by the same company as Offrs and Smartzip), it is unique to have the analytics as part of a larger lead generation and tracking ecosystem. There are some real advantages to having everything working together in the same place. If you’re using Top Producer, one of our favorite CRMs in the industry, to prioritize, track, nurture, and convert leads fed to your funnel by predictive analytics, you’re cooking with gas, as they say.
Top Producer’s biggest value is in its CRM, which allows a busy agent to rely on automatic follow-up with leads. It’s not cheap—in fact, it’s hard to tell exactly what Smart Targeting costs as it’s an add-on to the base price, but it is an exciting development in the industry. Synergy between all of your sales and marketing is a beautiful thing.
Top Producer CRM Review + Video Walk-through
Pros & Cons
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Top Producer Pricing
It’s challenging to get an accurate price for the Top Producer package that includes the Smart Targeting feature because it depends on the number of users and the market. However, the baseline Top Producer product—called Pro, which includes their top-notch CRM—is $109 per user, per month. The Top Producer Pro Teams package is $299 per user, per month. A Top Producer website is an additional $35 per user, per month.
Top Producer: Is It Right for You?
If you already have a CRM that you love, Top Producer isn’t for you. You’re better off subscribing to Offrs or Smartzip and integrating it into your existing CRM. It’s only if you’re already utilizing Top Producer or you want to make a CRM change that you should consider jumping in with two feet. Real magic can happen when all of your systems are not only talking to each other and working together, but taking advantage of cutting-edge technology that can skyrocket your business.
Addressable’s SmartCopy
The proprietary technology behind Addressable can already mimic human handwriting at scale, so now that it’s combining that capability with the effortless content creation of ChatGPT, we’re sitting up and taking notice. Addressable knows what we all know deep down—handwritten letters get opened, read, and responded to. Anyone can send out thousands of postcards, but a letter written in your hand is the Rolls Royce of direct mail marketing.
The new SmartCopy feature combines Adressable’s real estate writing expertise with ChatGPT’s endless possibility, creating a library of accurate, persuasive, effective content. This, combined with Addressable’s smart targeting of potential sellers in your farm area, makes it a marketing power play. While it’s not for everyone, mostly because of the price point, it is a fascinating player in the AI marketing game.
Addressable SmartCopy Pros & Cons
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Addressable SmartCopy Pricing
The company requires a six-month subscription for each territory. Territories cost between $12 and $80 per month. Handwritten mailers, which include the AI-generated message and envelope handwritten by robots, a first-class stamp, and lead tracking are priced as follows:
- $1.25 per piece if purchased upfront with territories
- $1.40 pay as you go
Addressable’s SmartCopy: Is It Right for You?
If you don’t have the time to sit down and handwrite letters to homeowners in your farming area, you should take a close look at Addressable and its new time-saving SmartCopy feature. It’s not for everyone—it’s cost-prohibitive to most new and part-time agents. However, if you have the budget, take advantage of Addressable’s smart targeting, expert content, and virtually foolproof handwritten letters.
AirDNA
In Chris Linsell’s recent presentation at the National Association of Realtors’ annual conference, he named Airbnb as the company that will have the single greatest impact on the real estate business. Why? Because short-term vacation rentals are drastically changing the makeup of real estate inventory and how we value properties.
AirDNA is an innovative (and affordable) tool that gives agents and investors a powerful way to measure income potential for any property. It analyzes a truckload of data, including demand and current local booking levels, as well as predicting estimated rental rates, occupancy, cash flow, and more.
As an agent in a market where short-term rentals (STRs) are popular, I can see this tool becoming a serious differentiator when it comes to accurately pricing your listings and making competitive offers.
Pros & Cons
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9 Skills Agents Need to Work With Investors & Close 50-100 Deals a Year
AirDNA Pricing
The AirDNA pricing model is based on the size of the territory you’re searching. Generally, a state is $179 per month and each city or neighborhood is $12 per month. A country is $299 per month and you can have the entire world for $599 per month. There are also enterprise-level solutions available. These prices are based on an annual contract that reflects a 40% discount on the monthly price.
AirDNA: Is It Right for You?
If you have (or will ever have) clients who are at all interested in short-term rentals—or if you are interested as a buyer, this is a must-have tool. AirDNA is inexpensive, the data you get from it is super valuable, and you can go month to month with it, so there’s very little commitment.
STRs aren’t going away any time soon. If they are popular and permissible in your market, you need this. If you’re still on the fence, AirDNA has unlocked the entire Santa Monica, CA, market so that anyone can test out the data insights and features.
TopHap
Need data and insights about the hottest neighborhoods in your market, price variations based on school districts, popular home features, and even natural disaster risks? TopHap’s insights, delivered in shareable sound bites, will give you the information edge over your competitors. Is the information on TopHap available elsewhere? Most of it is, yes. Would it be a ton of work to gather it, package it, visualize it, and make it shareable? Yes. A helluva lotta of work. TopHap is a great shortcut that positions you as a leading market expert.
This real estate analytics platform is all about giving you the savvy market insights you need to demonstrate your expertise in your next listing appointment or marketing campaign. If you’re working to establish and maintain your expertise in your market, TopHap will consistently arm you with the info and data points you need to wow your audience.
Pros & Cons
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What You Need for a Killer Listing Presentation
TopHap Pricing
This breakout is per month, but there is an 18% discount with an annual plan:
TopHap: Is It Right for You?
If you spend a lot of time mixing it up at local networking events or if you make a lot of video content highlighting your local market expertise, a service like TopHap will be highly valuable. Imagine how many people you’ll impress knowing a property’s earthquake risk, for example. TopHap delivers the talking points you need to get conversations started—or get signatures on the bottom line.
It’s true that this product could be considered a luxury service since most of this data is already available online. But, if your time is valuable and you need a quick, shareable, prepackaged, reliable source of data and conversation starters, TopHap is it.
Tomi.ai
Tomi.ai is a predictive analytics company focused on one thing: making your paid advertising on Facebook and Google more effective. To accomplish this, it uses proprietary predictive algorithms to analyze the performance of your existing ad campaigns.
The company then adjusts the targeting on your ad campaigns to more closely match your ideal client. The best part of the Tomi.ai process is that it is customized to your particular strengths. Since much of this process is hands-on and personalized, the service doesn’t come cheap, and it is designed for organizations that have a significant monthly ad spend. But, if you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads every month, a tool to help you tweak your targeting and vastly improve your conversion is worth its weight in gold.
Pros & Cons
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The 8 Best Places to Buy Real Estate Leads
Tomi.ai Pricing
The company offers two different price tiers to interested customers: Starter ($1,000 per month with an annual contract) and Professional ($5,000 per month with an annual contract).
Tomi.ai: Is It Right for You?
If you’ve doubled-down on your paid lead generation strategy and are now looking to scale, a product like Tomi.ai should absolutely be a part of your strategy. Their algorithms are all about getting the most out of your existing spend and targeting the “perfectly convertible” leads before going out and capturing more.
Yes, this product is very expensive. It’s ideal for larger organizations or even enterprises, but I could see luxury agents and high-producing teams getting a lot out of it. If you’re going big in paid lead generation, you should check out Tomi.ai.
Revaluate
Most Realtors know that building your sphere of influence is important, but they have no clue how to score and prioritize all the contacts they’ve collected. That’s where Revaluate comes in, sorting and ranking the most important people to a real estate professional: the people who already know, like, and trust you.
Revaluate cleans, detoxes, and scores your database, but its core product applies the same deep-learning algorithms that other top predictive analytics companies are offering. Instead of using predictive analytics to identify likely leads among strangers, Revaluate identifies opportunities within your existing relationships—a powerful shortcut in the nurturing process.
Pros & Cons
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Revaluate Pricing
The company’s pricing is based on the size of the database being monitored and optimized. Pricing for individual agents starts at $1 per contact (per year) with a minimum contact list of 2,000 people, making their minimum annual price $2,000.
Revaluate also offers discounts for larger databases (usually for teams and brokerages, but individual agents are welcome to get these discounts as well) starting at 10,000 contacts.
Revaluate: Is It Right for You?
You need to have a large contact database. Because Revaluate requires a minimum of 2,000 names, brand-new agents should probably look elsewhere for lead scoring services.
Methodology: How I Chose the Best Predictive Analytics Companies
Even though our team has decades of combined real estate experience, navigating through the wild, complex, and sometimes confounding world of data analytics wasn’t easy. To make sure we were using objective measures, in addition to our educated opinions, we looked at these five key criteria to select our picks for the top companies:
Bringing It All Together
Data analytics, and predictive analytics specifically, is an exciting, cutting-edge field that has the potential to completely shake up our industry. I believe that agents, teams, and brokers will see a serious ROI with the right data analytics tool. I hope this guide has helped narrow down the options and decide what might be the right company (or companies) for your business.
Are there any predictive analytics companies serving the real estate world that we missed? Who should we include the next time around? Tell us in the comments below!
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