Why is there no commercial equivalent to MLS?

[George Hatch]

Keep hoping that CoStar keeps on charging one kidney a month and the owner keeps it private and a tight leash on the data.

Because if CoStar ever sells out to CoreLogic, (or similar ) which is what many MLS systems did, the commercial appraisers will risk the data being made available for wide use or even public consumption, or used for AVM and for commercial BPO's and such.

I bet many RE agents saw part of their exclusive control over the data leading to commission cuts and competition from online websites, especially now that the public can pull up many MLS listings over ZILLOW. REDFIN etc. The MLS availability can also be used to populate AVM's or outsourced reviewing on the res side..

I am a subscriber to Parcelquest, which provides a public records feed for every county in California. It's an easy-to-use database that enables me to search via parcel number (including page and block), property type, property specifics as reported by the counties and so forth. I can see just about every transaction CoStar can see and I routinely find sales data that they apparently don't see. It's not a silver bullet but it does provide an alternative starting point. I use this database to cross check against all the others I use. I use this database to count the number of a given property type in an area, how many units in the subdivision, what the age/size/price ranges are and so forth. It's great for looking at sales histories. I'm typically in that database 2-3 times or more for almost every assignment I perform.

It's the searchability for property types other than SFRs that makes this a good value for me. I can easily figure out when a transaction includes multiple parcels which might not be mentioned in an MLS or other listing.

They sell statewide subscriptions for $155/mo and a nationwide subscription for $189/mo. Their primary limitation will be the availability of the info at the counties.