The four tiers of CRE underwriting
Every commercial real estate underwriting platform falls into one of four tiers, and the difference between them is who they are built for, what they cost, and how fast they can produce a defensible analysis.
Tier 1: Enterprise legacy. ARGUS Enterprise, Yardi Investment Suite, CoStar Real Estate Manager. Institutional funds, REITs, and pension consultants. Annual contracts in the $25K to $500K+ range. Heavy onboarding, deep modeling capabilities, and a learning curve measured in months rather than weeks.
Tier 2: Mid-market SaaS. Dealpath, Juniper Square, Honest Buildings. Growing firms with ten to a hundred person teams. Annual subscriptions in the $18K to $60K range. Cleaner UX, faster onboarding, but still primarily a system of record. The underwriting itself is human-driven.
Tier 3: AI-native services. Archer, Cactus, Clik.ai. Acquisition teams that want speed and are willing to pay $700 to $15K per month for a human-reviewed pipeline. Output quality is high, but you still book a meeting, send a deal sheet, and wait for the team to get back to you. AI is in the loop. You are not.
Tier 4: AI self-serve. Relm Pro is the only platform sitting in this tier. $49 per month, no demo required, first analysis in under ten minutes. Built for the analyst who wants to underwrite the deal that hit their inbox at 4:50pm on a Friday without scheduling a Zoom on Monday.
The other three tiers are not wrong. They are optimized for a different buyer. If you screen more deals than you close, the tier you actually want is the one that lets you screen at the speed of your inbox.