Commercial Real Estate Leads: Where Brokers Find Tenants, Owners and Investors, and the Signals That Flag Them

Commercial real estate leads come from four places: referrals, listings, property and company data, and vendors that sell leads or book meetings. Work at least three of the four, so one quiet channel does not empty your pipeline. They also sort every lead by who signs: a tenant, an owner or an investor.

Spona observed a new physical site at 306,853 US companies within the last 90 days. Each one is a timing cue, not proof that the firm needs space. A CRE lead is a named decision maker with a reason to transact and a way to reach them. Think of the COO whose lease ends next year, or the member behind the LLC that holds a warehouse.

This guide covers office, retail and industrial brokerage in the US and the UK. Residential agents have their own playbook.

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Commercial real estate leads: tenants, owners or investors?

Three buyers, three triggers. A tenant lead is a business that will need space. An owner lead is a person or entity that holds a building and might sell or lease it. An investor lead is a buyer with capital and a mandate.

Most prospecting advice blurs the three. That is why the same cold call goes to all of them.

Reonomy says its data covers more than 54 million US commercial properties. That is the owner and investor side: every parcel has a holder of record. Nothing in a property record tells you which business will need space next year. Tenant leads come from company data, and most broker playbooks leave that gap open.

Real Estate Bees sorts the leads it sells into buyer, seller, lease, borrower and agent-recruiting leads. The first three are yours. Borrower leads belong to lenders. Recruiting leads are for brokerages hiring agents.

Commercial real estate lead generation: six channels compared

Referrals are the cheapest channel and the hardest to scale. Nonresidential property managers are the best referral partners for an owner-side broker. They know which tenant is unhappy and which owner is tired. Spona counts 41,683 nonresidential property management firms in the US and 10,510 in the UK, across all size bands.

Residential agencies refer the small-business owner who also needs a shop or a workshop. Our realtor email list guide covers how to reach them.

Listing marketplaces are inbound. They work when you hold the listing and fail when you do not. Every inquiry is a lead for the listing broker alone. Marketing a listing well is a local lead generation job, since tenants search by neighborhood, not by broker.

Property-data platforms own the owner side. Reonomy starts at $400 per user a month by its own figures. Its pricing page says the annual plan includes 1,000 exports a month and saves 30%.

Company data with signals is the tenant side, and most playbooks skip it. A business with a newly observed site will deal with space again. So will one that just appeared in data sources for the first time. The next section puts numbers on it.

Managed outbound buys time, not data. SalesHive prices its packages at $4,500 to $12,000 a month, with month-to-month options. There is no per-meeting, hourly or commission pricing. Its own CRM shows at least 2,427 meetings booked across 33 CRE client accounts; booked, not held.

Read our lead generation outsourcing guide before you sign. You pay for the cadence whether or not the data under it is good.

Pay-per-lead marketplaces sell the inbound inquiry itself. Real Estate Bees offers four acquisition models and publishes no price. It replaces a lead with a disconnected phone or a dead email address if you dispute it within 48 hours of claiming it. Get the price per lead and the credit terms in writing before you claim the first one.

Which businesses are about to need space?

Four company events often precede a space decision: a new site, a first appearance in data sources, a hiring run and a funding round. None of them is a requirement. Each one is a timing cue. It puts a business on your call list before the lease conversation.

Our B2B buying signals guide covers how to score and act on signals in general. The counts below are specific to space.

The counts below cover two of those events. First seen means the company appeared across sources for the first time, not that it incorporated that day. New location means a new physical site was observed within the last 90 days, not that it opened that day.

In the US, Spona counts 571,601 companies first seen and 306,853 with a new site. A new-site record is available in Spona a median 8.2 hours after the event is observed. A first-seen record takes a median 13.4 hours.

The UK counts are smaller and faster. Spona counts 72,148 UK companies with a new site, available after a median of six hours.

Public registers count new registrations, a related signal, but later and without a contact. The Census Bureau's business formation statistics showed 578,926 business applications in one recent month, up 8.1% on the month before. Companies House recorded 192,287 incorporations in one quarter, on a register of 5,516,377 companies.

A newly registered company is a tenant lead only once it has staff. Filter first-seen firms by headcount before anyone calls.

New sites and new firms in 10 US metros

The table holds Spona's counts for the ten largest US metros by headquartered companies, all segments. New York leads on raw counts because it has the most companies. The rate per 1,000 headquartered companies is the better guide to where a broker's time pays. The chart below shows it.

Washington has 26.1 companies with a new site per 1,000 headquartered there, our calculation. That is the highest rate of the ten. San Francisco has the highest first-seen rate, at 40.5 per 1,000. Boston and Atlanta sit at the bottom on new sites.

The rate is an intensity index, not a share of local firms. A company counted in a metro was observed at a site there, wherever its headquarters sits.

Among small businesses with 1 to 49 staff, professional services have the most companies with a new site in six of the ten metros. Construction leads in Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and Boston. Restaurants lead in Houston. Four metros show the pattern.

Each cell counts a company once. A company can sit in more than one segment or metro, so the columns never add up to a total. A Miami broker working professional services has 1,196 firms with a new site observed in the last 90 days. Treat each one as a reason to call early, not as an open requirement.

Lease expiries: the 12 to 24 month window

Cresa tells office tenants to start looking 12 to 24 months before the lease expires. That is the window in which a tenant-rep broker gets hired. So the expiry date is the most valuable field in a tenant database.

It is rarely public. You get it from the tenant or from your landlord clients' rent rolls.

The volume can be large. CBRE counted 16 million sq ft of Manhattan office leases expiring in 2026. It counted another 15.9 million expiring in 2027.

Funding and hiring are the two softer signals. A funded company often hires, and a hiring company can run out of desks. Our guide to recently funded startups shows how to find them while the round is fresh.

Commercial real estate prospecting: owner research in five steps

Owner prospecting is research first and outreach second. Buildout's five-step framework runs territory and niche, networking, sales records, daily outbound calls and referrals. The steps below follow the same order and add the records you need in the US and the UK.

1. Pick a submarket and a property type. One submarket, one asset class, every building in it. A broker who knows each industrial building in one corridor out-researches one who skims a whole metro.
2. Pull the property records. In the US, the county assessor and recorder hold the owner of record, the sale date and the recorded loans. Reonomy adds filters for sale date, tenure, mortgage maturity and lender. In England and Wales, the HM Land Registry title register shows who owns a property and, where available, what they paid. A copy costs £7 online, and the title plan another £7.
3. Find the person behind the entity. Many titles name a company, not a person. Reonomy notes that the name on the deed is rarely the decision maker. Start with the state business register, though not every state lists an LLC's members or managers. In the UK, Companies House lists a company's directors and persons with significant control. Our guide on how to find the owner of a business walks through nine methods.
4. Get a verified contact. A name on a title is not a lead until you have a working email or mobile. Spona's Targeted Search looks up one named person from the Chrome extension. It costs 13 credits for an email and 88 for a mobile. For a whole list, upload it: enrichment costs 5 credits per verified email and 35 per mobile.
5. Run a cadence and log every touch. Owners sell on their timetable, not yours. A call and an email each quarter keep you in front of an owner until the year they decide. Log the tenure, the loan maturity and the last conversation. Work the list by maturity date first.

Where can you buy commercial real estate leads?

You can buy commercial real estate leads four ways: owner data by the seat, booked meetings by the month, inbound inquiries by the lead, or verified contacts by the lead. The table puts the published prices side by side.

The cheapest seat is not the cheapest lead. Reonomy's seat buys owner records that a broker still has to contact. PropertyRadar includes 250 phones and emails a month on Solo and 2,500 on Business. Its page does not say how much of its data is commercial, so test one county before you pay for a year.

Spona prices per lead instead of per seat. A Standard Search lead with an email and a mobile costs 35 to 55 credits. At the plan's credit price, that is $0.28 to $0.55.

Every new search session costs a one-time 1,000 credits. Every search starts with a free sample of leads, and the price per lead shows before you buy. The full schedule sits on Spona's pricing page.

Two numbers never appear in a lead price: the share of leads that answer, and the share that transact. Ask every vendor for both, in writing, for a broker in your asset class.

Calling and emailing prospects: US and UK rules

In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act makes no exception for business-to-business email. Every message needs your valid physical postal address and a working opt-out. You must honor an opt-out within 10 business days. Each separate email in violation can cost up to $53,088.

Calls to businesses are easier. The FTC says most calls made to a business to solicit sales from it are exempt from the Do Not Call rules. An owner's mobile may be a personal number, so scrub it anyway. Registry data for up to five area codes is free, and you must rescreen a list at least every 31 days.

In the UK, the ICO says the PECR rule on direct marketing by electronic mail does not apply to corporate subscribers. You do not need consent under PECR to email a limited company's staff at work. You must still say who you are and give a valid opt-out address. Email sole traders and some partnerships only if they have specifically consented or the soft opt-in applies.

A named work email is still personal data, so data protection law covers how you store and use it. Before live B2B calls in the UK, screen against both the CTPS and the TPS registers. The ICO notes that its guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. Check the page before each campaign.

Where Spona fits, and where it does not

Spona is the tenant side of commercial real estate leads, and the contact step on the owner side. You describe the business you want in a chat: "professional services firms in Miami with under 50 staff and a new location in the last 90 days". The AI pulls from 40+ sources, verifies each contact and returns a scored list in about 4 minutes.

You pay per lead. Signal filters for first seen, new location, hiring and funding work on Pro and above, combined with the profile. Brick-and-mortar data covers local businesses with physical locations. That is where property managers and small occupiers sit.

The price is the other fit. The Free plan carries 3,000 one-time credits, enough for a first search session and its sample. Pro is $99 a month with 10,500 credits. The per-lead prices sit in the table above, and new leads that match a finished search appear every week at the same price.

Where Spona does not fit:

• Property records. Spona holds no owner of record, sale history, loan or lease data. It has no building-size or square-footage filter. Reonomy, county records and HM Land Registry do that work. Spona finds the people once you have the entity.
• Lease expiry dates. They are rarely public, and Spona does not hold them. You collect them.
• Signals are observed events with a lag. In the US, a new-location record becomes available a median 8.2 hours after the site is observed. It does not mean the company is looking for space.
• Integrations. HubSpot is native on Premium and Expert. Salesforce takes a CSV import, and the API works on Expert only. Website visitor identification is not offered.
• Accuracy has a number, not a slogan. In Spona's audit, 2,941 of 3,017 records were correct on person, employer and title. Email deliverability is a separate metric, so verify before a large send.

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Commercial real estate leads FAQ

Which CRM fits a CRE brokerage?

The one your brokers update. A general CRM works when it holds the fields a deal needs: property, square footage, lease expiry, owner entity and the last touch. Spona pushes contacts into HubSpot natively on Premium and Expert. Salesforce and the CRE-specific systems take a CSV export.

Is there an app like Zillow for commercial real estate?

Commercial listing marketplaces play that role. They list office, retail and industrial space for lease or sale, searchable by location and size. For a broker they are an inbound channel that rewards the listing holder. Inquiries go to the broker on the listing, so they bring leads for your own space only.

Can you find commercial real estate leads without cold calling?

Yes. Referrals from property managers and lenders work without a phone. So do inquiries on your listings and email to businesses with a timing signal. In the US, B2B email is legal if it follows CAN-SPAM, which requires a postal address and an opt-out, among other rules. In the UK, PECR's email rule does not cover corporate subscribers.

Does a new-location signal mean a firm needs space?

It does not. The signal means Spona observed a new physical site at that company within the last 90 days, so that space is already taken. The firm may be growing or moving. Treat it as a timing cue for the next conversation, not as an open requirement.