Navigating the new frontier of academic research: How property data drives institutional research and decision-making
The intersection of academic rigor and real estate market dynamics is shifting. From the impact of environmental change on property valuations to the evolving regulatory landscape, academic researchers need more than just data. They need foresight.
- Universities and colleges rely on data to develop esteemed studies and reports.
- Property data enables impactful research in economics, public policy, and social science.
- Cotality's data fuels reputable research across higher education institutions.
For years, universities and colleges have researched and analyzed the housing market’s far-reaching economic effects on how we live and work. With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools, experts believe it’s more important than ever for students to become skilled researchers.
From real estate trends and climate change to property market costs and risk, Cotality provides data and related services to many of the nation’s most respected and prestigious universities for their research and academic needs.
The importance of academic research
Research papers, peer-reviewed journals, and studies published by scholars function as a living repository of human insight, documenting our progress and refining what we know to be true. Research-based knowledge fuels progress across industries, shaping innovation and policy. But to achieve this, researchers need access to accurate, multi-dimensional data – and more importantly, they need the right tools to pull meaningful insights from that data.
Cotality’s development pipeline is designed to empower the academic community with holistic property insights. As of April 2026, more than 900 peer-reviewed papers have been published using Cotality data.
How property data fuels academic insights
Yale University uses Cotality data to power faculty research programs, student dissertations, policy briefs, senior thesis essays, and hands-on learning through case studies, allowing researchers to inform policy at the highest levels.
Combining multiple products and tools, Yale’s research studies turn raw data into actionable academic insights. By mapping property taxes and housing affordability, researchers discovered that property taxes can take other forms. With permit data, researchers isolated fees charged on permits for building single-family homes, determining that these “impact” fees are particularly high in California.1
In another example, Yale researchers leveraged Cotality data to study the Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program's effects on house prices and insurance markets in the state of Florida. What they found is that homeowners primarily use PACE funds for home-hardening measures, and although this can lead to an increase in property value and a decrease in insurance premiums, participation in the program is low. With these findings, the research team was able to compile a list of suggestions to scale up the federal program.2
Tools & capabilities for academic research
It’s often difficult for students to achieve a high level of analysis using only public databases. Before Cotality data, Yale researchers had to request data directly from assessors’ offices for several cities each semester. This is not only time consuming but can also lead to limited or outdated datasets.
Cameron LaPoint, Assistant Professor of Finance at Yale University, reported that Cotality mortgage records show 15% more in aggregate mortgage origination dollars compared to public, regulatory data sources such as the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database.
With 50 years of historic property data representing 99.9% of the U.S. housing market, Cotality provides a 360-degree view of property. Key capabilities for academic research include:
- Data and analytics: Cotality answers top-of-mind questions around investors, migration, and affordability using real estate analytics suites, growth models, insurance premium and tax forecasting, and hazard risk models.
- Data linkage: Academic research requires data diversity. CLIP is our proprietary solution that ties together and standardizes disparate data sources to create a single source of truth for a property.
- AI-powered automation: More than 2.5 million algorithms curate actionable, proprietary property intelligence. Our data goes through thousands of automated, sophisticated data quality checks, and we use statistics-based manual checking to ensure accuracy.
Take academic research to the next level
Scholarly research serves as a roadmap for human inquiry, synthesizing complex data into a cohesive body of work that guides a wide range of industries. But turning raw data into actionable, academic insights is easier said than done – especially if datasets are inaccurate, outdated, or disparate.
Cotality data is multi-dimensional and quality-checked to fuel reputable research across higher education institutions. To learn more about how Cotality works with universities, watch our higher education webinar or contact us directly.
