It goes without saying that staying up-to-date on commercial real estate industry news can help you remain on top of major trends, uncover new possibilities, and anticipate potential hazards. However, finding the time to investigate the best sources, examine their marketing potential, and absorb all of the information needed to act as soon as needed might be challenging these days.
That’s why we’ve produced a list of the best commercial real estate news websites in 2023, each of which provides useful insights and unique opportunities for your content marketing and advertising efforts.
Best Websites For Real Estate News In 2023
There are numerous real estate news websites, and what qualifies as “the best” depends on your needs. We compiled a list of 20 websites that we regularly use to help us identify opportunities faster, analyze potential deals more thoroughly, and stay on pace to meet our real estate investment goals. Some fresh and distinctive websites that give real estate news that you may or may not be aware of have been added to the list.
#1. Zillow.com
Zillow.com is one of the best and most popular websites for real estate news for house buyers and sellers. It is more than just a website for browsing property listings, however, its vast MLS database is reason enough to make the list. It is distinctive for allowing you to look for foreclosures and newly built homes separately. We’ve included it because of its vast, open data collections. For example, it displays historical home values in a certain location as well as forecasted property values by neighborhood.
It can also link renters and landlords. Furthermore, you should research the rental prices for comparable houses in the region to avoid charging too much and having the property lie vacant. The Zillow “make me relocate” function is extremely useful for finding properties in a specific location. You can make an offer on properties that aren’t officially on the market. Buyers and sellers can use Zillow for free. It serves as a source of leads for marketers and generates revenue by charging advertising costs to agents, lenders, and other home service providers.
Trulia, StreetEasy, and HotPads are among Zillow’s consumer brands.
#2. Realestate.com
Realtor.com®, operated by Move, Inc., provides a comprehensive list of for-sale homes, as well as the information and resources needed to make informed real estate decisions. It makes our list of the best real estate news websites since it offers a wealth of useful information. For example, it provides a brief summary of local markets, such as the median sale price and average price per square foot, so you can estimate what a house in good shape is worth on the market.
It may show you properties that have recently come on the market as well as those that have been on the market for months, almost assuring that the sellers will accept any reasonable offer. If you discover potential buyers, the site will connect you with their real estate agent so you may schedule a visit. It also provides homeowners with a plethora of valuable tools and resources via the My HomeSM interface.
#3. Redfin.com
Redfin operates as a real estate brokerage. The Seattle-based firm was created in 2004 and went public in August of this year. Glenn Kelman is the company’s CEO. Redfin’s business model is built on sellers paying a nominal fee to Redfin. According to the company, Redfin Agents close 3x more deals than other agents, so they have the experience to help you sell your house for the top price.
Beyond the initial search, Redfin has advanced its technologies to make the home tour, listing debut, escrow procedure, and the entire process faster, easier, and worry-free. They have provided consumers more value, not only by saving thousands of dollars in fees, but also by investing in every home we sell, monitoring our performance, and always improving.
This real estate news website attempts to provide technology that improves the house buying and selling experience at every stage.
#4. National Association REALTORS® (NAR)
The National Association of REALTORS® is America’s biggest trade association, with 1.4 million members working in all sectors of the residential and commercial real estate industry, including NAR’s institutes, societies, and councils. Residential and commercial brokers, salespeople, property managers, appraisers, counselors, and others involved in the real estate market are among its members.
NAR also serves as a self-regulatory body for real estate brokerage. The headquarters of the organization are in Chicago. The association has its own code of ethics to which its members must conform. N.A.R. members are members of one or more of roughly 1,200 local associations/boards and 54 state and territory REALTOR® associations. The NAR has about 1.38 million members globally as of 2020, including 600,000 in the United States.
The organization also seeks to safeguard private property rights, promote homeownership, and lobby for the federal government to maintain appropriate credit and other standards.
#5. Trulia.com
Trulia is a Zillow Group consumer brand. The company goes above and beyond normal listings by getting information directly from locals and providing over 34 neighborhood map overlays to give customers a better sense of what it’s like to live in a home and community.
Know which property types or localities are popular, but avoid bidding wars on “hot” properties. Trulia allows you to explore areas by viewing genuine neighborhood images, drone videos, user reviews, and local insights to determine whether the houses for sale are perfect for you.
#6. Neighborhoodscout.com
Neighborhoodscout.com provides the most up-to-date, complete, neighborhood-specific crime, demographic, housing, school performance, and real estate trend and forecast analytics available today, with seamless coverage across the United States. Scout VisionTM Trends & Forecasts provide the most up-to-date and accurate house price and appreciation rate forecasts for every micro-neighborhood in the United States. An investor may simply determine whether to buy, hold, sell, or lend on their property with this thorough information.
It cuts down on the time spent looking for real estate by highlighting the areas that best fit your precise criteria. As a paying user, you will get access to predictive analytics as well as exclusive data and insights for every neighborhood and address in the United States. It is unique in that it exposes information about every neighborhood in the United States, address by address.
#7. Rentcafe.com
Rentcafe.com is a website that prospective tenants will visit to learn about market rent rates in specific localities. You’ll learn what your prospective tenants expect to spend in different communities, which neighborhoods have a reputation for affordability, and what lease conditions they expect. This website, for example, tells consumers how much they should anticipate spending for utilities or how much more they’d pay for a lease that includes utilities.
Rentcafe is also quite beneficial to renters. You can look for various kinds of residences and figure out how much rent you can pay. You can use their rent calculator to determine how much you could pay on rent while staying within your budget. The calculator multiplies your gross monthly revenue by 20%, 30%, or 40%, depending on how much you wish to spend. You can adjust the percentage of your income you wish to spend on housing using the slider.
They also have a mobile app where you may look at listings posted by property managers and contact them directly from the app – no middlemen!
#8. Nolo.com
If a landlord does not have a lawyer to consult, they should use Nolo.com as a legal resource. This website can provide essential information such as the requirements you must follow in a lease made for a certain state, how to handle deposits, and the laws you must follow if someone is late with the rent.
When you search for the requirements that apply to landlords in a specific jurisdiction, for example, the website offers the legal disclosures landlords must disclose to every renter. You can quickly determine when and why a renter can withhold payment and when they can deduct repairs from the rent.
#9. eRentpayment.com
eRentpayment.com offers numerous features that landlords will love. Tenant screening is one of the services offered by the website. Instead of dealing with papers, you might ask them to fill out online applications. They can submit credit and background checks through the eRentpayment.com platform. Many landlords would enjoy the eviction report, which shows if they’ve been evicted in the last several years.
It also offers online payment processing as a service. You may utilize the site to collect rent from each tenant, and it will send them automatic reminders whenever the due date approaches. You can modify late fees so that they are levied at a different level for each property. The site costs a few dollars per month for rent payment to collect the payment and transmit it to you, as well as provide receipts for everyone involved showing the rent was paid.
#10. Mysmartmove.com
Mysmartmove.com is a service dedicated only to doing background and credit checks on new tenants. The basic package checks your credit against Transunion’s database and obtains a National Criminal Background Report. An eviction report is part of the “Plus” package. The “Premium” level includes a comprehensive credit report and income forecasts.
When you ask a prospective tenant to provide information for the report, you are sending them the Mysmartmove link. They fill out the essential information and send you the reports. They may be forced to pay for the screenings in order for you to receive the report. This eliminates the need to collect application payments, and you will not be handling sensitive information about them.
Because one partner may have clean credit and a criminal record while the other has been arrested and/or evicted, you should require a background check on every adult in the household to receive an honest appraisal of the family.
#11. The Website of the Local Tax Appraisal District
There are fifty states in the United States, as well as thousands of municipal taxing jurisdictions. Prospective landlords and property buyers can find a lot of information on the local tax appraisal website. Data mining programs, for example, mine these sites to locate persons who own more than one home. Letters are sent to their primary residence with offers to purchase their other properties.
While some of these offer letters are sent to landlords who do not intend to sell, they can generate leads in the form of persons who did not intend to leave their previous residence but needed to do something to pay the bills. This leads to complete properties with tenants being offered for sale on a regular basis.
A property may be worth less than this estimate because it requires extensive repairs, but the tax district’s appraised value offers you an idea of what the authorities would use as the foundation for your property tax payment unless you can make a compelling case that it is worth significantly less.
#12. MLS.com
MLS.com is a free MLS search engine that allows you to find real estate MLS listings for sale by Realtors® and other real estate professionals that are members of your local MLS Multiple Listing Service. Real estate news, frequently asked real estate questions and answers, real estate classes, mortgage information, and a mortgage calculator are also available on MLS.com.
Find new and resale homes for sale, as well as acres, lots, land, commercial property, and investment property. Through its advertising real estate agents’ websites, the organization assists you in quickly and easily searching and finding real estate located all around the United States.
Many of the services required in a real estate transaction can be found through MLS.com. The real estate website contains some of the most well-known and recognized real estate names.
#13. NoradaRealEstate.com
Norada Real Estate Investments is a prominent real estate investment organization that provides investors with high-quality new and remodeled investment properties in high-growth locations around the United States. They were the second countrywide distributor of turnkey real estate, founded in late 2003, with properties ranging from Florida to Michigan.
It provides investors with fully renovated and newly built residential properties ranging from single-family houses to fourplex multi-units. When you buy them, their features make sense. Nothing needs to happen in order for the property to be a solid wealth-building investment. You can reach out to one of their Investing Counselors with any inquiries or to discuss your investment objectives.
#14. Homes.com
Homes.com is also one of the best websites for real estate news, with information on every stage of the home buying, selling, renting, and financing process. They’ve also compiled everything you need to know about how to rent a home, such as what amenities are important to consider when renting a home, what your rental budget is and how to calculate the costs of homeownership, understanding your rental agreement, and how to do a rental property walk-through.
They’ve created some money-saving suggestions and guidance in their finance section to enable new homeowners and those wishing to refinance to get acquainted with their financial possibilities.
You’ll also learn how to analyze your credit and what type of credit score you need to buy a home, as well as how to improve it. You can also learn about the components of a mortgage, such as the different types of mortgage rates, how to comprehend mortgage down payments, and how to get pre-approved by a lender.
#15. Auction.com
Auction.com is the nation’s premier online real estate marketplace, with over 30,000 reduced residential bank-owned and foreclosed home bargains to choose from. It is also one of the best websites for real estate news, offering the widest range of residential bank-owned and foreclosed homes to help you achieve your real estate investing goals. The Auction.com marketplace has made distressed property transactions easier for both buyers and sellers.
They have created an unrivaled transaction platform with the help of technology and data science, resulting in $39 billion in sales, 4.4 million registered buyers on Auction.com, 329,000 properties sold to date, 30,000 properties available for sale, 1,000+ employees serving the needs of buyers and sellers, and more than 15,000 auctions per year in all 50 states.
#16. Curbed.com
Curbed.com has been a vital element of the internet local news landscape since 2004. They are well-positioned to bring pertinent local issues to the attention of a large, national audience. They see homes, streets, communities, and cities as inextricably linked, unlike flashy shelter magazines. Curbed.com covers 14 American cities, while its flagship site covers everything in between (and every trend, and every great concept).
If you love where you live, you probably care just as much about the new park around the corner as you do about your lack of a dishwasher or the sustainability of a concrete structure in the desert. Curbed.com has you covered in 12 different American cities, while our flagship site has you covered in every place (and trend, and big idea) in between.
#17. Activrain.com
Active Rain is a similar site to Bigger Pockets. It has a membership of over 300,000 people. It is a real estate blog ideal for people looking to network with other real estate professionals, and they claim to have the world’s largest repository of real estate knowledge, with over 4 million blog entries on all things real estate.
So, it was created primarily for the real estate sector’s needs, particularly for individuals interested in blogging for business within the real estate market or for consumers seeking real estate education. This real estate website features real estate agents as well as mortgage brokers. There are both new and experienced real estate investors.
Thousands of blogs are written by real estate investors, agents, and brokers. You can find articles on everything from how to qualify for a commercial real estate mortgage to how to clean up after a hoarder. Their blogs have built-in lead capturing systems, social sharing capabilities, SEO structured content, and the possibility to publish your blog on a website with very high domain authority.
#18. Popstream.com
Popstream is a subscription-based service. Its main advantage is that it allows you to locate distressed home sellers. Leads from foreclosures, liens, and tax sales can be fed into the database. You can compare this data to the MLS to identify persons who need to sell a property before it falls into foreclosure or who are likely to sell to settle a divorce. There’s a lot more information here than on a specific site like Foreclosure.com.
The Popstream mobile tool allows you to track where you drive so that you don’t travel in the same location twice. It also allows you to get details about the house directly in front of you. PropStream charges $97 per month for full-featured software access. Profits from a single deal discovered utilizing the PropStream real estate program can cover that expense for active real estate investors.
#19. This Old House
There are certain chores that should be left to the pros, such as repairing a faulty breaker or a plumbing issue. You may, however, be able to fix any minor issues yourself. This is when the website “This Old House” enters the picture. They demonstrate how to repair a variety of problems, such as jammed doors and leaking garbage disposals.
They provide information to help you determine when you need to employ a professional. So, they also give you the information you need to vet contractors, so you don’t unwittingly hire a fly-by-night outfit. Aside from that, renovating your own home can save you a lot of time and money.
The company owns the two most popular home improvement shows on television, This Old House and Ask, as well as the highly regarded This Old House Magazine and a thriving digital business at ThisOldHouse.com and across a variety of platforms such as social, podcasting, app, YouTube, and free ad-supported digital television. According to The New York Times, Salon, and The Atlantic, the brand continues to resonate with audiences all over the world.
#20. SparkRental.com
SparkRental is one of the best websites for landlord real estate news. It provides property management software services via an online site. These resources are ideal for landlords who have one to fifty rental properties. You can, for example, utilize their website to do background checks and credit reports. It allows you to collect rent online or construct leases for certain states.
You have the option of reporting their rent payments or nonpayment to credit bureaus. You can track expenses there. One advantage of SparkRental is the ability to compare pricing for services such as HVAC maintenance and roof repairs against their price tables. The website contains information about real estate investing and property management.
They did, however, make our list of the best websites for real estate news due to their property management tools. They have you covered on everything from posting your vacant rental listings to several websites with a single click to quick and easy tenant screening to fiercely protected leasing contracts. Their continuous property management software offers features such as online rent collecting, expense keeping, and ledgers, simple (and recorded!) discussions with tenants, property photo and legal document storage, and much more.
How to Obtain Reliable Real Estate News From Websites
There are certainly numerous. It goes without saying that staying up to date on commercial real estate industry news can help you remain on top of major trends, uncover new possibilities, and anticipate potential hazards. Furthermore, when presented in the correct context and in front of the right readers, your thought-leadership pieces and targeted advertising will generate more value for your investment.
Read Also: TOP REAL ESTATE COMPANIES: Top Picks In The US
That is why we have compiled this list of the top commercial real estate news sites that provide valuable insights and unique opportunities for your content marketing and advertising efforts: market news, real estate investor websites, and realtor websites all provide useful information and regular updates, but only a few stand out. Here are some things to bear in mind when looking for genuine and accurate real estate news websites:
- Design – You’d be surprised how much a website’s design may inform you about its validity. Cluttered websites with no apparent content hierarchy demonstrate a lack of thought and may not be your best pick for dependable real estate news. Although the opposite is sometimes true, it is not always the case.
- Content quality – Take a look at some of the front-page real estate blog postings. Are they accurate, well-written, polished, and comprehensive? Or are they riddled with grammatical faults, jerky flow, and poor structure? You must consider all of these factors while selecting real estate news websites.
- Reviews – It is usually a good idea to read what other people have said about a website. If the majority of the reviews are unfavorable, you may want to avoid them. If the reviews are mostly positive, you should investigate what people are complaining about. This can save you a lot of time and heartbreak.
Daily posts are preferred, but weekly updates are acceptable as well, especially if the posts are informative and well researched.
How Reliable Is Your Housing Market News?
Which sources do you rely on for accurate home market news? Here are some easy tests you can use to determine the validity of a news item:
Is it too wonderful to be true? If something appears to be too good to be true, it most likely is.
Examine the source. A trustworthy website is less likely to endanger its high ranking by displaying unconfirmed real estate data.
Examine the date. In 2008, a real estate news piece may have been revolutionary. That doesn’t make it valuable now.
Who penned it? Social networking is an excellent tool for accomplishing this. Examine the author’s social media accounts to ensure they are who they claim to be.
So, before you reference unverified real estate news sources at a professional real estate business meeting or base your real estate investment decisions on some analytics, be sure you’re connected to the right housing market news sources.
Websites For Real Estate News FAQs
What is the most accurate real estate website?
Realtor.com
The National Association of Realtors is affiliated with Realtor.com. It contains 800 regional MLSs, making it by far the most accurate house website. In addition to great accuracy, Realtor.com provides a wealth of statistics and data to house purchasers.
Which real estate website is most popular?
According to monthly website visitors, Zillow is the leading real estate and rental website in the United States. As of October 2021, it received 36 million visits each month.
How do you stay up to date on real estate news?
- Speak with a real estate agent who has already done the legwork for you.
- Examine comparable, but be sure they’re the proper comps.
- Keep an eye out for anything unusual in the neighborhood.
- Read local real estate media.
- Understand the timing of your market.
- Maintain contact with the real estate agent who sold you your house.
