Reselling enriched property records usually runs into the vendor's redistribution terms

I didn't know redistribution clauses were a thing here. So if you buy a list and mail it yourself that's fine, and the problem only starts when you hand the records to somebody else?

@ryanmck27 broadly yes, that is the shape of it, though the specific line sits wherever the contract draws it, and some agreements also cap how many mailings you can run off a single pull. A common pattern is a vendor rep saying on a call that reselling is fine and everyone does it, while the signed agreement says the opposite. The call does not count. Only the paper counts.

Four months is optimistic for building your own, fathom. Take a permit scraper across three counties as the reference case: eleven weeks for the three is a realistic build, and one of the three changing its site layout in month two is the normal course of events.

Dumb question. If the data is public record, how can a vendor stop you passing it on? They didn't create it.

The vendor, @nataliehsu, makes no claim to own the underlying facts. The contract covers the copy they handed over, and the licensee agreed to a restriction in exchange for access. Nothing stops anyone going to the county and getting the same records directly, it just costs the four months fathom is trying not to spend.

Put a number on the four months. If lantern's eleven weeks for three counties holds and you want 40 counties, you are not shipping this year. Meanwhile the licensed version could be live in three weeks as a display only product. What does the revenue plan look like under each?

There is a middle path worth naming. Some vendors sell a redistribution or reseller tier at a much higher price with different terms. It is worth asking for a quote before you assume the answer is no, because the sales side often has a contract form you never see on the self-serve page.

That is the first thing in this thread, @dmitri_248, that reads like an actual solution rather than a fork in the road.

The other risk in licensing is that the product is only as defensible as the vendor's willingness to keep selling to you. If they launch their own search tool for investors next year, you are a customer competing with your supplier. That pattern has played out in other data markets and the customer always loses that argument.

Start on a license and sell something, then build your own pipeline for the one or two signals your buyers actually pay for. Owning 40 counties of everything is unnecessary. Owning whatever makes people renew is the whole game.

@tylerbrooks9 is describing the right approach. The signals buyers of this kind of product ask about are narrow. Nobody pays for a full record dump. They pay for the two hundred owners who look like they are about to be done.

Fathom, one thing nobody's asked. Does your product actually need to hand the records over, or can it show search results and route contact to the seller through you? If the buyer never gets the file, some of the redistribution problem goes away and you keep the relationship. That changes the build, and it changes what you're selling.