CoStar vs. Cotality: Which Property Data Platform Has Better U.S. Coverage?

The property data platform with better U.S. coverage depends on what is being covered. CoStar has the deepest commercial real estate coverage in the United States, with 6 million-plus commercial properties researched by 1,600-plus dedicated field researchers, while Cotality (formerly CoreLogic, rebranded March 2025) has the broadest U.S. coverage of any kind, with property records on 99.9% of all U.S. properties drawn from more than 22,000 inputs. CoStar's edge comes directly from its 1,600-plus researcher operation; Cotality's edge comes from its 22,000-source aggregation model. If the work is commercial real estate, the answer is CoStar. If the work touches residential or all-property data infrastructure, the answer is Cotality.

A property data platform decision is typically a multi-year, six-figure commitment that becomes the foundation for every downstream model, valuation, underwriting decision, prospecting workflow, and customer-facing analytic the buyer ships. Picking the wrong one has real consequences: paying CoStar prices for residential coverage that still has to be backfilled from another source, building a CRE underwriting workflow on Cotality's all-property base and discovering it lacks the verified lease comps and tenant-level data commercial brokers need, or locking into either platform's contract before realizing the actual coverage gap is something neither solves (MLS depth, parcel-level tax data, off-market intelligence). Here is how each platform defines and proves "coverage," where each one leads, and which buyer profiles should pick which.

How CoStar Wins on Commercial Coverage (and Where Its Coverage Stops)

CoStar runs the largest dedicated commercial real estate research operation in the industry, and that operation is the source of every coverage claim downstream of it. CoStar's market analytics page describes the model as 1,600-plus dedicated market researchers combined with field, aerial, and drone research, data feeds, and public records. At ground level, researchers physically inspect properties, interview tenants suite by suite, photograph buildings, and verify data through repeated re-canvasses. CoStar Group's own positioning statement makes the case directly: "we know of no other organization that invests more to research every detail of the commercial real estate market." Every other CoStar coverage claim flows from this investment, which is why competing aggregators cannot reproduce the same depth from public records alone.

The raw counts behind the researcher operation translate directly into buyer-facing data. CoStar Manager reports more than 6 million properties and 11 million lease and sale comps in the database, which is the inventory behind verified lease comps, current availability, submarket rent trajectories, and sale comparables across every major U.S. CRE asset class. There is a distinction worth pinning down: CoStar Property Records advertises 8.5 million commercial property records, a slightly different count that reflects records (some properties carry multiple records for parcel or portfolio reasons) rather than unique properties. The 6 million-plus property figure is the verified-property count; the 8.5 million-plus records figure is the records-product count.

Coverage by asset type is where the CRE depth shows up. CoStar's Property Records product covers office, industrial (including the rapidly expanding data center asset class), retail, multifamily, and hospitality at the building level. For each asset, the record carries availability, vacancy, rent, time-on-market, owner identity, tenant identity, lease history, sale history, and field-captured photography. That is a layer of building-level intelligence aggregators cannot reproduce without a field operation of their own.

Tenant-level coverage is a coverage dimension competitors rarely match. CoStar's mobile product listing describes tenant data for 8-plus million locations: location history, lease activity, stacking plans, and tenant rep contacts. Tenant-level lease intelligence, verified availability at the submarket level, and building-by-building rent comps are the buyer-language outcomes this coverage supports, and they map directly to brokerage prospecting, CRE underwriting, and asset management workflows. This data layer exists because field researchers walk buildings; it does not exist in a pure-aggregation platform.

CoStar's coverage stops at commercial. Single-family residential, broad parcel-level data on every U.S. property, and 50-year historical residential records are outside its universe. A buyer trying to use CoStar as an all-property data infrastructure layer is using the wrong tool, no matter how deep the CRE coverage runs. CoStar is also expanding adjacent capabilities: it completed its $1.6 billion acquisition of Matterport in February 2025, adding 3D digital twin capability that may surface as a CRE coverage differentiator, and announced a $800 million definitive agreement to acquire Zonda (new-home construction data) on May 29, 2026, with the deal expected to close in H2 2026. Neither shifts the commercial-only boundary today.

How Cotality Wins on All-Property and Residential Coverage (and Where Its Coverage Is Thinner)

Cotality's coverage is the entire U.S. property universe: residential, commercial, vacant land, and parcels. The headline number is 99.9% of all U.S. properties, and the platform reports it in multiple places. Cotality's Araya platform page describes the data backbone as over 22,000 sources covering 99.9% of U.S. properties. Cotality's Our Data page describes U.S. property records spanning 50 years with 99.9% market coverage, and the company's commercial real estate overview describes "a 99.5% standard of accuracy across coverage for over 99.9% of all U.S. property records." Across product surfaces, the 99.9% number is the consistent coverage claim, and it represents the broadest single-platform U.S. property data set publicly documented.

The 22,000-plus source figure represents a fundamentally different coverage model from CoStar's. Where CoStar produces coverage via proprietary field research, Cotality produces coverage by aggregating and stitching public records, contributory sources, MLS feeds, taxing authorities, and proprietary data sets. Cotality reconciles them into a single record using its CLIP (Cotality Linkage and Identification Project) unique property identifier, which is the mechanism that prevents the same property from appearing as three different records when its parcel ID changes during a sale. Cotality's CRE overview describes the result as 5.5 billion records spanning 50 years. The buyer-facing implication: aggregation delivers breadth and historical depth at a scale field research cannot match, while field research delivers verification at a depth aggregation cannot match. The two models answer different coverage questions.

Residential and MLS depth is where Cotality's coverage diverges from CoStar most clearly. Cotality's real estate industry page reports 94% MLS coverage and a user base of 1 million-plus agents. The user base is documented: MLS-Touch is available to agents through their MLS subscription, and Cotality's AVM, mortgage analytics, and home-price-index products run on the same residential data foundation. Cotality's Total Home ValueX AVM listing on Databricks Marketplace describes 5.5 billion records with daily updates and 99.9%-plus U.S. property coverage. For residential AVMs, mortgage underwriting, loan portfolio analytics, and home-price-index work, this is what the industry actually runs on. National AVM coverage with daily refresh, 50-year residential property history, and MLS-fed valuation modeling are the buyer-language outcomes specific to this layer.

Cotality also maintains active relationships with approximately 22,000 taxing authorities, which is a coverage dimension that matters specifically for tax service, escrow, and portfolio risk work. CoStar does not maintain anything comparable. For lenders, servicers, and insurers whose workflows depend on assessor and tax-collector data feeds at near-universal county coverage, this is the layer that decides the platform.

Cotality's CRE-specific depth at the building level does not match CoStar's. Verified lease comps at the building level, current availability across 3,000-plus submarkets, and photographed property inspections are CoStar capabilities, and Cotality does not attempt to reproduce them through proprietary CRE field research at the same scale. A CRE broker, CRE investor, or CRE appraiser who picks Cotality as the primary platform will find the building-level CRE intelligence thinner than what 1,600-plus CoStar field researchers produce. The aggregation-vs-research trade-off is the philosophical choice each platform made, and it is what makes the coverage question a split decision rather than a single winner.

Where ATTOM Challenges Both (Mixed-Use B2B Data Infrastructure)

ATTOM (ATTOM Data Solutions, formerly RealtyTrac) is the third platform that holds a defensible position on coverage, and it does so by occupying the mixed-use, all-property B2B data infrastructure layer between Cotality's full solution stack and a buyer who wants flexibility. ATTOM reports coverage of more than 158 million U.S. properties and 99-plus percent county population coverage, which makes it a documented alternative to Cotality for buyers who need parcel-level all-property data infrastructure without committing to Cotality's enterprise contract.

ATTOM holds up where the coverage need is parcel, deed, mortgage, tax, foreclosure, neighborhood, and AVM data at near-universal county coverage. That is the same all-property breadth play Cotality runs, delivered through a more flexible bulk-licensing model that suits B2B data customers building on top of the data rather than consuming it through an enterprise UI. PropTech startups, mortgage tech vendors, fintech analytics teams, insurtech underwriters, and real estate marketing platforms all need validated property data without an enterprise contract, and ATTOM's delivery model is built for exactly that posture. The ATTOM acquisition of ResiShares analytics assets in January 2026 extended this footprint into single-family rental analytics, which is one of the fastest-growing investor segments in U.S. residential.

ATTOM's coverage falls short of Cotality's on source-count depth, 50-year historical reach, MLS coverage, and breadth of taxing-authority relationships. Cotality's 5.5 billion records, 22,000 sources, and 22,000 taxing-authority footprint is unmatched at the platform level, and ATTOM does not claim to match it. Relative to CoStar, ATTOM does not produce verified building-level CRE intelligence through dedicated CRE field researchers, so it is not a CRE platform in the way CoStar is. The buyer who picks ATTOM is the B2B data buyer who wants flexible bulk licensing for all-property data infrastructure and is not buying the full Cotality solution stack.

Coverage Is Six Dimensions, Not One: A Side-by-Side

The comparison runs across six dimensions, and a platform that wins one dimension can lose another. Breadth (how many properties), depth (how many fields per property), freshness (how often the data is updated), source diversity (how many inputs feed it), property-type specificity (CRE vs. residential vs. all-property), and verification methodology (proprietary research vs. aggregation) each carry their own buyer implications. The table below maps each platform to what it actually proves on each dimension.

Other Property Data Providers

Picking the Right Platform for the Property Universe You Work In

Pick CoStar if the work is commercial real estate: brokerage, CRE investment, CRE appraisal, CRE asset management, or any workflow that depends on verified lease comps, current availability, building-level tenant data, or submarket-specific CRE analytics. CoStar's 1,600-plus field researchers produce a depth of CRE coverage no aggregator can match, and that depth is the reason CoStar dominates its segment.

Pick Cotality if the work touches the full U.S. property universe: residential mortgage, AVMs, home-price indices, all-property risk modeling, insurance underwriting, tax and escrow workflows, or any B2B data infrastructure that needs 99.9% U.S. coverage with 50 years of history. Cotality's aggregation model and 22,000-plus sources are what the residential and all-property side of the industry runs on, and the 94% MLS coverage and 22,000 taxing-authority relationships are the layers that decide the platform for lenders, servicers, and insurers.

Consider ATTOM if the need is specifically mixed-use all-property B2B data infrastructure with flexible bulk licensing, without paying for Cotality's full solution stack or needing its MLS depth. ATTOM holds a defensible third position on the coverage question, especially for PropTech and fintech buyers who want to build on top of validated property data through a more flexible delivery model.

CoStar leads commercial, Cotality leads all-property and residential, and ATTOM challenges Cotality on B2B data infrastructure, each by a margin that reflects how different their research models are. On the coverage question, that split is the right answer, and a single-platform decision should follow the property universe the buyer actually works in.