Property listings and owner records in a site search: what they add

Property data answers the two questions a site search reaches last: what will this space cost, and who owns it? xMap Flows has two kinds. Property listings show what is for rent or for sale right now, with the asking price and floor area, in the United States and Japan. Property changes read the public records of some US counties: new owners, sales with their price, new values and uses. Outside those places, neither is available yet, so a site search there stops at places and people.

This article is for expansion teams, brokers, landlords and investors who already know which streets they like and need the property layer on top. It explains what each source covers, how to use them in a flow, and the limits to keep in mind.

What each source covers

Coverage in xMap Flows. Places outside a source's area are left out before any search and the step says how many.

Listings: what space costs near a site

Property listings live in the Regional data sources block: pick the United States or Japan, then the Property listings dataset. You choose where to look (around each incoming place, an area, or a point), how far (from 100 m to 5 km), the kinds of property, rent or sale, and price and size limits in the local currency, US dollars or Japanese yen. In Japan you can also ask for a walk of at most so many minutes to the nearest station, and for listings added or updated in the last 7, 30 or 90 days.

The block can pass on the listings themselves, each with its link and distance from your site, or keep your sites as the items and add a summary to each: how many listings are nearby, how many for rent and for sale, the median price, the median price per m² and size, and the cheapest and nearest listing.

As a made-up illustration, say a bakery chain has three candidate corners in Osaka. Put the three in a table, run Property listings around each with retail and restaurant units for rent within 500 m and a five-minute walk to a station, and pass on counts. The three corners come back with how many units are on the market and what the middle one asks per m². One corner with plenty of units at a modest rent is a stronger negotiating position than one with a single listing at a high rent, even if the street is busier.

Owner records: who owns it and what changed

The Property changes block reads the public property records that US counties publish. It works in two ways.

• Changes in a county. Pick a county and the kinds of change you care about, such as sales and new owners, and optionally limit it to a few ZIP codes. Set to Since the last run, each real run brings only what changed since the last one, up to 500 changes. Each change comes with its address, the owner now and before, the sale price and date where there was a sale, values before and after, and a position on the map.
• Owner of each incoming place. For each of your candidate sites in the United States, up to 100 a run, it finds the parcel by address and adds the owner, the mailing address, the value and the use. Places outside the United States are left out and never charged.

Two uses stand out in a site search. Finding the owner of a vacant unit lets you approach the landlord rather than waiting for a sign in the window. And following sales and new owners of commercial buildings in your target streets shows you who is about to renovate, re-let or sell, often before anything is listed. The properties that sold this week and new homeowners templates show both ideas at work.

Counties publish on their own timetables, so a short period can contain no changes at all; the step says when the county's latest update was. After a gap of weeks, the changes of the whole gap arrive together with approximate dates, and the step marks them.

Putting both into one site search

For candidate sites in the United States, a single flow can carry a site from places to property:

1. My data with your candidate addresses.
2. Nearby places around each, counting rivals and anchors within the distance you care about.
3. Regional data sources, Property listings for the United States, passing each site on with rent counts and medians.
4. Property changes, owner of each incoming place, to add who owns each site and what it is worth.
5. xMap LLM to score each site from all of the above and give one reason.
6. Make a report for the people who will visit the shortlist.

In Japan, drop the owner step: county records are a US source. For a network in both countries, use one Property listings block for each country, since each dataset covers its own country only.

Mistakes to avoid

• Reading asking rents as market rents. They are the starting point of a negotiation.
• Adding up yen and dollars. Keep each country in its own flow or its own column.
• Expecting listings in other countries. Sites outside the United States and Japan are skipped, and the step says so.
• Expecting every US county. Property changes covers only the counties in its list, which grows over time.
• Treating owner records as a mailing list. They are for understanding a property, not for unsolicited mail.

For the earlier part of the search, choosing which city and which streets, see entering a new city.