How to Build a CRE Contact List From Scratch

Every successful CRE prospecting campaign starts with a list - and not just any list. A bloated, unverified list of random property owners is one of the fastest ways to waste time, burn through email domain reputation, and generate zero deals. What you need is a targeted contact list built around a specific thesis, enriched with decision-maker contact information, and verified before you ever send a single email.

This guide walks you through exactly how to build a CRE contact list from scratch - the right way - whether you're a solo broker just getting started or an experienced pro looking to systematize your prospecting for the first time.

Step 1: Define Your Prospecting Thesis

Before you pull a single contact, you need to know exactly who you're targeting and why. A prospecting thesis answers three questions:

1. Who are you targeting? Building owners? Corporate tenants? Investors? Be specific about the type of prospect - ownership structure, company size, occupier category, or investor profile.
2. What property criteria defines your universe? Asset class, submarket, building size, age, occupancy level, and ownership type all narrow your universe to the prospects most likely to transact.
3. Why would they want to talk to you right now? Lease expiration, recent market activity, portfolio rebalancing, or capital needs - there should be a reason you're reaching out beyond "you own a building and I'm a broker."

Without a clear thesis, you end up with a generic list that leads to generic outreach and predictably poor results. With one, every contact on your list has a specific reason to hear from you.

Step 2: Pull Property-Level Data

Once you have a thesis, you need data. Start with the properties, then work backward to find the people.

CoStar

CoStar is the most comprehensive source for CRE property data in the U.S. Use its search filters to identify properties that match your criteria - asset class, square footage range, submarket, occupancy, lease expiration windows, and ownership type. Export your results to a working spreadsheet. This becomes the spine of your contact list.

If your firm doesn't have a CoStar subscription, check whether you can access it through your brokerage. Many larger firms have enterprise licenses. If not, the cost is significant, but for a serious prospecting effort it pays for itself quickly.

County Assessor and Recorder Records

For brokers without CoStar access, or for supplemental research, county public records are free and authoritative. Assessor databases show ownership entity names, assessed values, and last sale dates. Recorder databases show deed transfers, lien activity, and sometimes loan documents. Many counties have searchable online databases - start with your county's official website.

The limitation here is that you're working property by property rather than running bulk exports. It's slower but free and often more current than third-party databases.

Local MLS and Loopnet

LoopNet (CoStar's public-facing counterpart) shows you what's actively listed but not necessarily what's off-market. For finding owners of properties that are NOT currently listed - which is often the most valuable prospecting pool - LoopNet is less useful than direct assessor research or CoStar's ownership data.

Step 3: Identify the Decision-Maker Behind the Entity

This is where most brokers get stuck. The property ownership record says "Maple Street Properties LLC." That's not a person - it's a legal entity. Your job is to find the human who controls that entity and has the authority to list a property, renew a lease, or make an acquisition decision.

State Business Registry Searches

Every state maintains a business registry (often called the Secretary of State database). Search the LLC name and you'll often find the registered agent and sometimes the organizer - which can give you a name and address. From there, LinkedIn or a simple web search often surfaces the principal.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is underused as a CRE prospecting tool. Once you have a company name, search for it on LinkedIn. Look for principals, managing directors, or owners. For smaller ownership entities, the principal often lists the entity name on their profile or is easy to connect to through their employment history.

ZoomInfo and Similar Contact Databases

For institutional owners, REITs, corporate tenants, and property management companies, B2B contact databases like ZoomInfo, Apollo, or Clearbit can quickly surface verified email addresses and direct phone numbers for the right decision-makers. These tools work best for companies, not individual private owners - but for that segment of your list, they're extremely efficient.

Manual Research

For private owners and family offices, sometimes there's no substitute for manual research. Google the entity name. Check the county recorder for the signing party on the deed. Look at any press coverage of the property. Search LinkedIn for people who list themselves as managing that type of portfolio. It takes more time, but the personalization you can bring to outreach when you've done deep research is hard to replicate at scale.

Step 4: Verify and Clean Your List

A raw list is not a prospecting list. Before you use it for outreach, you need to clean it.

• Email verification: Run every email address through an email verification tool (NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, or similar) before sending. Bounce rates above 5% damage your domain's sending reputation and can get your outreach flagged as spam. This is non-negotiable.
• Deduplication: If you've pulled from multiple sources, you'll have duplicates. Merge them before building your outreach sequences.
• Relevance check: Spot-check 10–15% of your list manually. Are these actually the types of prospects you defined in your thesis? If you find a lot of outliers, tighten your filters and re-pull.
• Suppress existing relationships: Cross-reference your list against your CRM. Contacts you already have a relationship with should not be getting cold outreach - they should be in your warm follow-up workflow instead.

Step 5: Organize for Outreach

Structure your list so it feeds directly into your outreach system. At minimum, you want columns for: first name, last name, company/entity name, email, property address or identifier, and any personalization variables you plan to use in your emails (submarket, building size, lease expiration date, etc.).

If you're using an outreach platform like MogulAim, you can import your list directly and build personalized email sequences around those custom fields. The personalization variables you capture during list-building become the raw material for outreach that doesn't feel like a mass blast.

How Big Should Your List Be?

There's no universal answer, but here's a useful frame: a list of 150–300 highly targeted, well-researched contacts is more valuable than a list of 3,000 loosely matched ones. Quality compounds. When you know exactly why each person is on your list and you've crafted your outreach around that reason, reply rates climb sharply.

Build in batches. Start with your highest-conviction segment - the submarket you know best, the property type where you have the most transactions, the tenant profile where you have the strongest relationships. Get the playbook working there before expanding to adjacent markets and segments.

Keeping Your List Current

CRE contacts go stale fast. Ownership changes, tenants move, decision-makers leave companies. A list you built 12 months ago needs to be refreshed before you use it again. Build a recurring process for updating ownership data, reverifying emails, and removing contacts who have explicitly opted out of your outreach.

Your contact list is a living asset - not a one-time project. The brokers who treat it that way build a prospecting advantage that compounds over years.

The Bottom Line

Building a CRE contact list from scratch is a research project, not a data dump. The work you put in upfront - defining your thesis, finding decision-makers, verifying contacts, and organizing for personalization - directly determines the quality of your outreach and the number of conversations you generate.

Once you have a clean, targeted list, the next step is getting your outreach right. Try MogulAim free to see how AI-powered email sequencing can turn your contact list into a consistent pipeline of CRE opportunities.