Buildout vs BrokerHQ: An Honest Comparison for Tenant Rep Brokers (2026)
By Casey Krueger, Founder & CEO, BrokerHQ · Published May 29, 2026 · Last updated May 29, 2026
- Buildout and BrokerHQ solve different jobs: Buildout is listing-marketing software (offering memorandums, flyers, broker sites); BrokerHQ is tenant-rep prospecting and deal intelligence.
- If your problem is marketing the deals you already have, Buildout fits. If it's finding which tenants to call next, that's BrokerHQ.
- Buildout's pricing is not a flat per-seat rate. Its own pricing page lists a starting benchmark of $125 per user per month, and the published structure is module-based with a mandatory brokerage fee on top; BrokerHQ shares pricing on a call during the founding period, with the founding rate locked for the life of the subscription.
- They are complementary, not either-or: a listing-side brokerage can use both.
On March 10, 2026, Buildout launched its own CRM, the last piece in what the company calls an end-to-end deal engine for commercial real estate. If you are a tenant rep broker, you are probably asking the obvious question: do I still need a separate prospecting tool, or does Buildout now do all of it?
I run BrokerHQ, so treat this as a competitor's view and check the sources yourself. I have tried to keep it honest. Buildout is a genuinely good product. It is also built for a different job than the one a tenant rep does every morning.
Related reading: the complete guide to CRE workflow automation in 2026 and the AI trust gap in CRE.
The short answer
Buildout is the strongest tool in the market for listing, marketing, and running a whole brokerage's back office. If your day is built around winning listings, producing offering memorandums, and syndicating them, Buildout is hard to beat and its new CRM makes that stack tighter.
BrokerHQ is built for the other side of the desk: the tenant rep who starts the day asking "which companies should I be calling this quarter, and why." We read public filings, county records, and license data, then surface lease maturities and expansion signals with every claim sourced back to the original record. Buildout points its newest tools at sellers and listings. We point everything at tenant-side prospecting.
Most tenant reps will not pick one or the other. They will use Buildout's strengths where they exist and use BrokerHQ for the prospecting research that Buildout was never designed to do.
What Buildout is, and what it is genuinely good at
Buildout launched in 2010 and built its reputation on CRE marketing. Brokers create roughly 15,000 offering memorandums in Buildout every year, and its Showcase product pushes listings out to dozens of CRE platforms automatically, with a branded listing site and lead capture for each one. [Source: Buildout Showcase]
The platform today spans CRM (Rethink), marketing (Showcase), property intelligence (ProspectNow), and commissions and deal workflow (Manage & Close). With the March 2026 CRM launch, Buildout's pitch is that a brokerage can run the entire deal lifecycle in one connected system. [Source: Buildout press release]
If you produce a lot of marketing material or manage a large active listing inventory, that is real value, and it is the thing Buildout does better than almost anyone.
Where it leaves tenant reps wanting more
Buildout was designed listing first, and independent reviewers note that the tenant rep and deal pipeline side reflects that history. For tenant rep work, teams lean on a Site Selection tool to rank shortlists, and on a Rethink+ upgrade for signals like "likely to sell" and ownership data. [Sources: Ascendix and Software Advice]
That is useful once you already know who you are chasing. It does less to answer the question that comes first for a tenant rep: who in my market has a lease rolling in the next 12 to 24 months, and what in the public record tells me they are going to move?
That gap is the whole reason BrokerHQ exists.
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The core difference in one line
Buildout helps you market and manage the deals you already have. BrokerHQ helps you find the deals before your competitor does, with the evidence to back the call.
Side by side
| BrokerHQ | Buildout | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Tenant rep prospecting and research | Whole-brokerage marketing, listings, and back office |
| Core job | Surface who to call and why, sourced to filings | Win listings, build OMs, syndicate, manage deals |
| Lease maturity intelligence | Pulled from public company filings, every claim sourced | Not the focus; signals via Rethink+ upgrade |
| Where data comes from | SEC EDGAR, county assessor, state and city records, permits, licenses | Property and marketing data, ownership via ProspectNow |
| Your uploaded data | Stays yours, never pooled into a shared dataset | Standard CRM data handling |
| Pricing | Shared on a call during our founding period; founding rate locked for life of subscription | Module-based, from $125/user/mo, plus a $275/mo brokerage fee |
| Best fit | Independent and boutique tenant reps who do their own research | Listing-heavy teams and full brokerages |
Sources: BrokerHQ pricing and data sources from brokerhq.ai; Buildout pricing from Capterra and Software Advice.
Pricing, plainly
BrokerHQ and Buildout solve different jobs. Buildout is a CRM for managing listings and deals. BrokerHQ is a data-intelligence layer for tenant-rep prospecting, sourced to public records, with verified sale provenance and your data staying yours. A single tenant-rep commission is worth tens of thousands of dollars, so the product pays for itself on one deal.
Buildout's published pricing is module-based rather than a flat per-seat rate. Its own pricing page lists a starting benchmark of $125 per user per month (checked 2026-07-20), and its plan structure adds a mandatory brokerage fee: Showcase at $199 per month plus a $275 per month brokerage fee, and Manage and Close at $85 per month plus the same $275 fee (checked 2026-08-02). [Sources: Buildout pricing page and Real Estate Bees] For a solo or boutique tenant rep, that difference in structure matters as much as the number.
"Why not just use ChatGPT for this?"
It is a fair question, and we get it constantly. The honest answer is that a general language model does not have a live, sourced data layer for commercial real estate. Ask one for a company's current lease maturities or comp data and it will often invent something plausible and wrong.
BrokerHQ's value is not that it is clever. It is that every number links back to the filing or record it came from, so you can trust it in front of a client. Use a general model for drafting and reasoning. Use sourced infrastructure for the data your reputation rides on. That distinction is also why we describe BrokerHQ as intelligence infrastructure rather than another AI tool.
Watch: what tenant representation actually involves
If you are newer to the tenant rep side, this explainer is a clean overview of how the work and the lease negotiation timeline fit together.
Who should pick which
Pick Buildout if your job is listing-led: you market properties, produce OMs, and want one connected system for a marketing-heavy brokerage.
Pick BrokerHQ if your job starts with prospecting: you are an independent or boutique tenant rep, you do your own research today, and you win by showing up to the meeting more prepared than the next broker.
And if you do both, run them side by side. They are not really competing for the same hour of your day.
Frequently asked
- Did Buildout launch a CRM?
- Yes. Buildout announced Buildout CRM on March 10, 2026, positioning it as the final piece of a single connected system for the deal lifecycle.
- Is BrokerHQ a Buildout alternative?
- For tenant rep prospecting, yes. For listing marketing and OM production, no. They solve different problems, and many brokers use both.
- How much does each cost?
- Buildout does not use a flat per-seat rate. Buildout's own pricing page lists a starting benchmark of $125 per user per month, and its published structure is module-based with a mandatory brokerage fee on top. BrokerHQ shares pricing on a call during the founding period; founding members lock a founding rate for the life of their subscription.
- Where does BrokerHQ's data come from?
- BrokerHQ's data comes from public records: SEC EDGAR filings, recorded transfer data, and county assessor records, with every figure linked to its source.
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Comparisons reflect publicly available product positioning as of May 2026. Pricing changes; verify on each vendor's website before purchasing. This page is not sponsored and contains no affiliate links. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.