LOS ALTOS, CA—Prospecting for sellers of real estate is anumbers game and a lot like throwing darts. If a broker talks toenough owners, eventually there will be someone who intends to sellbut this requires talking to many who will not. The challenge is tomarket to the right building owners who actually have a need tosell or buy, filtering out the properties with virtually no chanceof selling.

To address this challenge, a predictive model scores propertiesand tags them as likely sellers, making it easier for professionalsto find properties that are ripe for sale listings. This is theoperating platform of ProspectNow, which is anonline commercial real estate database.

The database contains information on more than 8 millionbuildings, 6 million building owners and 30 million commercialtenants nationwide. Through the properties, companies andforeclosure search engines, ProspectNow subscribers can easilylocate the phone numbers and mailing addresses of building ownersor key LLC contacts. These results also yield comprehensiveproperty information that includes a building's vital statistics,tenant roster, transaction history and notices of default orforeclosure.