Announcing the Thesis Driven Developer Database

We're documenting the universe of real estate developers and what they're each building

Today, Thesis Driven is launching its first (non-newsletter) product into public beta: the Thesis Driven Developer Database. The database’s aim is to document all real estate developers in the US, Canada, and the UK. Initially, we’re focused on a few key aspects of each developer:

• The markets in which they operate;

• The products (thematically) they are building;

• Their leadership teams.

Thus far we have fully documented over 2,000 real estate developers across 42 real estate product categories ranging from ground-up multifamily to hospitality to marinas and infrastructure. (We estimate there are approximately 10,000 developers that would qualify for inclusion, so we have a ways to go.)

The Thesis Driven database today is entirely handmade; it is powered by actual human review of public records, news articles, social media pages, and developer websites. For a number of reasons, we’ve decided to prioritize accuracy over completeness at this stage. Over time, we’ll layer in more verified, user-submitted information to complement the work our own team is doing. But our bar for accuracy is fairly high; we don’t want to pull in a bunch of scraped records that will sacrifice reliability for the illusion of scale.

Why do this and who is it for?

One, we believe it is very much needed. While there are good tools out there for finding information about specific sites or real estate investors, documentation of developers—GPs—is rather limited. Many developers don’t have websites, and public databases of development projects often only reference the single-purpose LLC holding the project, not the developer making it all happen.

The quality tools out there that do exist—such as CoStar and Real Capital Analytics—are overkill for many use cases like prospecting and research. They’re also prohibitively expensive for many brokers, vendors, and proptech companies. As a vendor, using CoStar or RCA to prospect is like hunting ducks with cruise missiles: it’s way too much firepower (and cost) for what you’re doing.

What we’ve built is comparatively simple and lightweight by design. The Thesis Driven Database does not have site-specific information, for example, nor is it focused on each developer’s capitalization. There are plenty of other good places to find that, and it’s vastly more costly to procure. Instead, the Thesis Driven database is a way to keep tabs on the real estate products and themes you read about here on the Thesis Driven newsletter. The database offers subscribers the ability to “subscribe” to themes and markets to get notified when new developers are working in those areas—particularly useful if you’re operating in a niche sector like coliving or medical office.

What does it cost?

While the Thesis Driven database is simpler than the alternatives in the market, it is priced accordingly: initial pricing for the database is $49 per month, or $400 for a full year. We plan to raise that to $99 per month in February of next year, but all existing subscribers will be grandfathered in until at least the end of 2024.

Database subscribers also get full access to all Thesis Driven newsletters, so we’ll refund a pro-rated portion of your subscription here if you choose to subscribe to the Developer Database.

You can go here to sign up start browsing the database.

How can you help?

If you are a developer, you can claim your Thesis Driven database profile on your firm’s profile page. (Just search for your firm under the Developers tab here.)

If your firm isn’t yet listed in the database, please send us an email at hello@thesisdriven.com and we’ll create a stub page for you to complete.

Otherwise, early user feedback is critical to shaping the database and driving our priorities; we encourage early users to tell us explicitly the data they’d like to see us collect on each developer. Feel free to share feedback to the email above or at our contact form here.

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While this is the first standalone product we’re launching at Thesis Driven, it won’t be the last. We believe strongly that the real estate industry is in need of innovation that reflects the realities of the industry. Much more to come.

—Brad Hargreaves