Above: Brian Tepfer, CEO of PropStream
As one of the leading real estate data and lead generation platforms in the country, PropStream is on a mission to provide real estate professionals with the most comprehensive solution for finding off-market property leads encompassing the latest trends and technology advancements.
Real estate and mortgage professionals can then build their businesses and, in turn, help their clients achieve their homeownership goals through informed business decision-making.
At the heart of PropStream’s high-tech offering is a vast collection of customized and curated property data for more than 160 million properties nationwide, including public records, MLS listings, liens, bankruptcies and pre-foreclosures. Some of this data is also enhanced with AI, and it’s all searchable and easy to consume, with thousands of filters in an easy, user-friendly interface.
“Our mission is to bring the most comprehensive, multi-sourced and complete data to our customers that would otherwise be unaffordable and difficult to attain,” says Brian Tepfer, CEO of PropStream. “We also provide add-on marketing tools that support turning leads into deals.”
The Lake Forest, California-based firm provides transparent pricing for its services right on its website, along with a robust list of its platform features. From real estate investors, agents and brokers to mortgage lenders, contractors and appraisers, PropStream wants to be the data source of truth for the housing industry at large.
And by all accounts, it’s well on its way.
Standing apart from the competition
PropStream prides itself on two key competitive advantages: cost and product differentiation.
“I believe the services we offer for the cost is one of the most competitive in the marketplace,” says Tepfer. “We’re continuing to add new data and predictive AI to help our customers find the best-motivated homeowners who are ready to work with them.“
PropStream purchases a tremendous amount of data from multiple sources to power its platform, including public property records, MLS data and information about liens, bankruptcies and pre-foreclosures, among other snapshots, from best-in-class sources.
The secret sauce, though, according to Tepfer, is taking that wealth of data and making it easily searchable and digestible.
“We provide nationwide data, allowing our users to find their leads based on homeowner situations.”
Unlike some lead-generation services that sell pre-packaged lists, PropStream allows users to customize their searches using thousands of different filter combinations (some of which include AI) across the United States to find the exact leads they want. Its targeted search is one of the key benefits that sets PropStream apart from its competitors.
But PropStream is more than just a property data platform.
The company also provides valuable insights to help real estate professionals make the most of their investments, including demographic trends, rehabilitation costs, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) calculators, predictive foreclosure scores and AI-powered property-condition scores.
“We’re curating machine learning data, photo AI data, and we’re developing proprietary predictive analytics, situational information on the homeowner—who they are, what their incomes are—then helping those data points drive better leads that are qualified,” explains Tepfer.
The ADU calculator, for example, allows users to estimate the cost of adding an ADU to a property, which can be a valuable tool for investors looking to maximize a property’s potential.
“Our customers also use it for investment purposes,” says Tepfer. “For example, if I’m going to buy a property, I could potentially build an ADU on it and rent it out for additional income. PropStream provides the data and tools to determine if adding that ADU is an affordable and/or profitable decision for that property.”
PropStream’s AI-powered Prediction Intelligence tool also helps users identify properties at risk of foreclosure, giving them a head start on potential investment opportunities or helping agents acquire a new listing. It’s just one of many examples of how PropStream thinks about product differentiation so it can better meet customers where they are and solve their needs.
Pairing robust data and analytics with learning
PropStream doesn’t rest on its data and analytics laurels alone. Education and support are important aspects of the company’s success, with a dedicated team of trainers and a full customer service support bench of 30 team members.
“A product is only as good as our customers’ ability to use it,” says Tepfer. “We could have the most robust data platform on the market, but if our customers don’t know how to use it, it loses value.”
The company’s PropStream Academy courses offer a handheld approach to learning how to use and study PropStream’s vast features and datasets, created by a team of experienced educators to help users get the most out of the platform.
Where the Academy offers a baseline for PropStream users to learn the ropes, the customer support team is an additional layer to the educational experience, available to jump in and offer personalized assistance for any questions or concerns that may arise.
The training and customer service are also notable value-adds for clients like MLS of Southern Arizona that don’t have the bandwidth to offer it to their members or users.
“MLSs must consider the support that the vendor or partner provides to their consumer using their product,” says Monica Solis Peña, vice president of the MLS of Southern Arizona. “PropStream has a large depth of customer service resources, and the training they make available is also invaluable. It alleviates my work by them making customer service and training available through their website and to all users.”
PropStream’s library of educational content isn’t static learning. In fact, Tepfer says the company constantly fine-tunes its educational offerings to stay ahead of market twists and turns.
“We take a look at market trends and what’s happening, whether it’s an increased foreclosure market or if we see there’s a trend moving in a certain direction like upsizing or downsizing,” says Tepfer. “We look at all these data points and try to create learning models and Academy courses based on what we see in the marketplace.”
Power users see boost in leads, efficiency
For PropStream’s devoted customers, having access to the platform’s powerful database not only helps them grow their businesses at scale, but also increases their response time and efficiency—both critical when you’re up against a fast-moving housing market.
Josh Schoenly, a team leader with eXp Realty and loan officer with NEXA Mortgage in Central Pennsylvania, began using PropStream in the summer of 2020.
Schoenly says he initially came to the platform because of its comprehensive datasets and the ability to do layered filtering, but he stayed for PropStream’s granular analytics capability. This allows Schoenly to find hard-to-target leads, such as absentee and out-of-state owners or homeowners looking to potentially downsize, and match that information with relevant property characteristics for those niche groups.
“The ability to layer that all together to build more targeted audience lists allows us to be more strategic about marketing to and connecting with potential clients who are more likely to transact,” says Schoenly.
He adds, “The ability to create a list and skip trace to append data within a matter of minutes means if you’re working with clients and there’s limited inventory, I can build a list of potential off-market properties that fit the criteria they’re looking for very quickly. And I can market to those folks to see if they’ll consider an offer from our clients or if they know anyone in the neighborhood that might consider selling.”
Real estate investor Nick Kamrada says PropStream’s user-friendly interface and curated data lists have been a boon for his Florida-based business, Twenty Seven Properties.
“We target homeowners who want to sell their homes quickly and stress-free,” says Kamrada. “The lists we get from PropStream have sourced deals for us for years. The ability to create very curated and custom lists has been helpful to us as we scale so that we can cast a wide net and, at the same time, have smaller targeted campaigns.”
At a broader level, PropStream offers a value-added benefit to real estate agents who subscribe to and rely on their local MLSs to advertise their property listings to the public.
As a former PropStream employee who knows what its tech stack can do, Peña says she was excited to bring the product to the MLS of Southern Arizona’s 7,000 subscribers.
“We opted to offer marketing credits to our members; we felt that that was the highest value to our participants,” Peña says, calling PropStream “the best lead generation or marketing compilation product” out there. “Our leadership feels we’re giving true value back to our member participants.”
Charting a path forward
Looking ahead, Tepfer is optimistic about the real estate market and where inventory can improve in 2025 due to pent-up demand. However, he acknowledges that interest rates and inventory levels will be key factors in determining the strength of the market.
“The real estate market is cyclical, and with the challenges of high interest rates, elevated home value and low inventory, it has been a difficult year for many real estate professionals,” Tepfer says. “However, despite these challenges, there will always be people with unique housing needs that require assistance. PropStream is perfectly positioned to help real estate professionals identify those motivated to make a move regardless of what the market is doing.”
PropStream remains laser-focused on providing the best possible user experience for its customers, whether they’re agents, investors or other real estate professionals. To do that, Tepfer and his team will continue to look for innovative ways to connect users with the latest and greatest datasets available to find those most motivated to do something about their homes.
“When you’re looking at data solutions, any vendor can state they have data, but what we do really well is help illustrate and connect the data to our users. For example, our skip tracing is an excellent resource for getting the contact or email records for homeowners, allowing users to easily and efficiently send postcards and make phone calls.”
From a product standpoint, combining industry knowledge with AI-powered datasets will help PropStream outperform and outlast other tech companies as competition ramps up in the year ahead and beyond.
“We know how the space works,” says Tepfer, pointing to his two-plus decades of experience in real estate technology. “I understand what is important to our end users and what helps them move the market. It’s being able to connect those dots and say, here is how we’re going to make our platform accessible and valuable to all real estate professionals.”
For more information and to sign up for a free, seven-day trial, please visit https://www.propstream.com.
