What is pre-mover data?

The short version

When someone puts their home up for sale, they're about to move. Pre-mover data tells you which households have just taken that step — weeks before the move actually happens.

The simple version

Every week, thousands of Canadian homeowners list their properties for sale. Each listing is a public signal that the household behind it is preparing to relocate. Pre-mover data captures those signals, validates the addresses, and delivers them in a structured file that businesses can use.

That's it. Pre-mover data is a weekly list of households that are about to move, identified from the moment their home hits the market.

The reason it's valuable is timing. From the day a property lists to the day the household physically moves, the household is still deciding for weeks. In those weeks it is making decisions about everything tied to their address: internet, insurance, banking, utilities, home services, furniture, appliances. Every one of those decisions is a commercial opportunity — for the business that reaches them first.

Why it matters

Moving is one of the biggest spending events in a household's life. People changing addresses need new service providers, new insurance policies, new utility connections, and new everything-else for the new home. Canadian research consistently puts the average household spend during a move at several thousand dollars — on top of the property transaction itself.

Retention

If a household is your existing customer and they're about to move, you're about to lose them — unless you know about the move early enough to intervene. A telecom provider can offer a smooth service transfer. A bank can proactively discuss the next mortgage. An insurer can quote a new policy at the destination address. All of these work, but only if the outreach happens before the customer finds a replacement on their own.

Acquisition

If a household isn't your customer but they're about to move into your service area, they're looking for new providers right now. The first business to reach them during the move window has a structural advantage. Not because of a better price or a better product — just because they got there first, at the exact moment the household was making the decision.

How it's different from new-mover data

This is the most common source of confusion in the category, so it's worth being clear about it.

Pre-mover data identifies households before the move, from the listing event. The household's property has just entered the market. The move hasn't happened yet. You have weeks to act.

New-mover data identifies households after the move, from change-of-address records, utility hookups, and similar post-move filings. The household has already relocated. The address-bound decisions have largely been made.

The gap between the two is weeks long — and for most business purposes, that gap is the entire campaign. If you're trying to retain a customer, pre-mover data gives you time to intervene. New-mover data tells you the customer has already left. If you're trying to acquire a customer, pre-mover data lets you be the first offer they see. New-mover data puts you in line behind whoever got there earlier.

Both kinds of data are useful. They solve different problems. Pre-mover data is for businesses that want to act before the move. New-mover data is for businesses that are comfortable acting after. See the full comparison →

Who uses it

Pre-mover data shows up in nearly every industry where the customer relationship is tied to a residential address. The specific application changes, but the underlying logic is always the same: know about the move early, act inside the window.

Telecoms and internet providers use it to retain subscribers who are about to disconnect and acquire new subscribers at addresses entering the market. The move event is the single biggest driver of subscriber churn.

Banks and mortgage lenders use it to spot upcoming mortgage discharges, identify new origination opportunities, and retain borrowers by proactively offering financing for the next property.

Insurers use it to quote new policies before policyholders start shopping at the new address. Also for portfolio monitoring — a listed property signals a change in risk profile.

Home services, moving companies, and retailers use it for acquisition — reaching households during the high-spend window around a move, when they're buying furniture, appliances, cleaning services, landscaping, and home improvement.

Direct marketing teams use it as a trigger-based targeting layer on top of their existing campaigns. A household that is actively moving responds at a materially higher rate than a household that isn't.

What's actually in the data

A pre-mover record is a property-level record. It describes the property and the listing event — not the person living there. A typical record includes:

Standardized address and postal code. Listing date. Status: new, on the market, or off market, with the week it came off. Property type (detached, semi, condo, townhouse). Asking price and price history. Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage. Geocoded latitude and longitude. Days on market.

What it does not include: names, phone numbers, email addresses, or demographic information. The data is about the property and the market event. The customer identification happens when the business matches the file against their own records on address — inside their own systems, under their own privacy framework.

How to get it

Buy a pre-mover mailing list. PreMovers.ca sells pre-mover lists for any Canadian province, city, postal area or radius around a postal code. Pick the area, see the count, and the list comes as a CSV ready for your printer or Canada Post. Standard lists are $150 per 1,000 homes, Plus lists with the home details are $250 per 1,000, and the minimum order is $75 (500 homes). Every address is checked against Canada Post address data. See the counts by city and province →

Enterprise weekly feed. Telecom, banking, insurance, utility and retail teams take the full national file every week, through Snowflake Marketplace, an MCP connector for AI agents, or flat files (CSV or Parquet). Same data, delivered into the systems the team already runs. Request a sample file →

Common questions

What is pre-mover data?

A weekly record of households that are about to move, identified from the moment their property is listed for sale. PreMovers.ca supplies it as mailing lists by city and province from $150 per 1,000 homes, and as a weekly feed, so a business can reach the household in the weeks before the move.

How is it different from new-mover data?

Pre-mover data flags households before the move, from the listing event. New-mover data flags households after the move, from change-of-address records. Pre-mover gives you weeks of advance notice. New-mover arrives after most buying decisions have already been made.

Does it include personal information?

Pre-mover data is property-level: address, postal code, listing date, property type, price. It has no names, phone numbers or email addresses. PreMovers.ca follows PIPEDA, and the business matches the data against its own customer records on address.

How often is it updated?

Weekly. A new file every week reflecting the latest listings, price changes, and homes that came off the market across all 10 Canadian provinces.

Who uses it?

Banks, telecoms, insurers, utilities, moving companies, home services providers, retailers, and direct marketing teams. Any business whose customer relationship is tied to a residential address.

Is it the same as a list of houses for sale?

No. A list of houses for sale is a snapshot. Pre-mover data is a continuously maintained, address-validated, deduplicated weekly record of households transitioning through the move lifecycle — listed, relisted, price-changed, off market. It's structured for CRM matching, not browsing.