Is Costar used by many or few?

[Aaron Vernon]

I have been growing my knowledge of many interesting areas of real estate investing. I want to find my niche that will peak my interest and allow a long term involvement in the investment industry.

Yesterday afternoon, I met with a representative of the Costar company. They sat down and gave an introduction to their website. Of course, they were trying to gain my business, but they were very forward with price. I felt there was transparency in everything they did. The website is more of a research site which tracks commercial properties. They have a wealth of information available for an investor to use. It seems that it could reduce many hours of research needing to be done by a prospective buyer.

Has anyone heard of them? Is anyone a member of their site? Please let me know.

And if anyone was wondering, the minimum cost quoted to me was approximately 3600 per year.

Any input would be great. 

[Account Closed]

CoStar is used extensively by us brokers to facilitate the transacting of property. It provides us with important information regarding the details of the past sale of properties (sale comps) and it does have a database of properties for research as well.

I my experience, CoStar's property database is not as complete as others. There are other tools out there (property database tools) that have a more comprehensive set of buildings for less than what CoStar charges.

In essence - for brokers, CoStar is a must. For a buyer or perspective buyer, maybe a little overkill.

That's my $.02.