Short answer: Because the data platforms built for institutional multifamily — CoStar, Reonomy, Crexi — are expensive, overbuilt for anything under about 80 units, and often thin or outright wrong at the small-property level. So I built my own map, using public parcel data, to see what actually exists in the Raleigh–Durham small multifamily market.

Here’s how I got there.

The problem: small multifamily is invisible

If you’re underwriting a 200-unit Class A deal, you have options. CoStar will show you comps, ownership history, rent trends, the works. If you’re looking at a 12-unit property in a neighborhood you don’t already know cold, you’re mostly on your own.

My specific example was from when I just started out looking for locally-owned small multifamily that was in a close driving proximity. I pulled CoStar lists through connections that never quite had the right owner info and seemed to be a bit spotty as far as property coverage. I could find more properties using public data, but then I had to go through the entire skip tracing process manually, which takes hours upon hours.

That gap isn’t an accident. It’s a rational business move:

• The buyer pool is smaller and more local, so there’s less commercial incentive for data platforms to build it out
• Ownership is fragmented — a lot of these properties are held by individuals or small LLCs, not the institutional owners that show up cleanly in commercial databases
• The data that does exist is scattered across county tax records, GIS parcel layers, and permitting systems that were never designed to talk to each other

So I did what anyone with a data problem and no existing solution eventually does: I built the thing I needed.

What Raleigh Map Room actually is

Raleigh Map Room pulls public parcel-level data across Wake, Durham, and eight surrounding counties and puts it on a map, organized by unit count, vintage (year built), and location. It’s not a deal marketplace, and it doesn’t promise off-market access — it’s a visibility tool. It answers questions like:

• How many small multifamily properties (5-50 units) actually exist in this submarket?
• What’s the age distribution of the housing stock here?
• Is ownership in this ZIP concentrated or fragmented?

None of that is exotic information. It’s public. But nobody had organized it for this specific size band, so it was effectively invisible.

What this doesn’t solve

To be direct about limits: this is not a substitute for underwriting, broker relationships, or local knowledge. Public parcel data has gaps and lags. Brokers still — appropriately — bring deals to buyers they trust first; that’s not a flaw in the system, it’s how relationship-driven markets work. What a map like this does is give you a starting picture before you’ve built those relationships or before a deal crosses your desk, so you’re not evaluating a submarket cold.

Why I’m sharing this instead of just using it privately

I quickly understood that this would be helpful to a lot of people just starting out, and more importantly, I thought it would be essential to allow users to provide feedback on the data. The best way to make sure Raleigh Map Room is up to date, is to shorten the feedback loop from users as much as possible. No data source is perfect, even though some may charge you like that’s the case. With a more community-oriented platform, I strive to keep it as accurate as possible with the help of the users.

If you’re evaluating small multifamily in the Raleigh–Durham market, the current market report is public and free — no gate, no email required. Just click this link to find it.