CoStar is blowing it
I think CoStar offers a very unique, hands on service. This thread is more about their handling of Loopnet. CoStar is hell bent on getting rid of the #1 CRE site in the country and calling it CoStar for some reason I will not understand.
Grandmas, students and all walks of life now know the name Loopnet, just in time for it to go away.
CoStar is going to control a ton of data and charge even more for it. Up until about 2010I think Loopnet was $79 a quarter for full service. They didn't offer comps then, just for sale listings and for lease. It was great. Even just a few years ago it was awesome. Now it seems you have to pay $10k a year to CoStar to get the dope on Loopnet.
Soon Loopnet will be no more and we will all be talking about the good ol' days.
Same concept as Argus IMO. They took something that didn't need fixing and broke it. People in leadership positions (read: Baby Boomer gen.) in the CRE tech sub-industry don't yet understand how to do a software roll-out, much less creating a good product in the tech space. In a lot of cases you have people that don't understand the day-to-day value of the software that are leading the strategic decisions of those firms. Will unfortunately be a while until Gen Y and Millennial cohorts are in positions at those companies to help right the ship with technical knowledge.
Completely agree with your reasoning for what's wrong. When we had an instructor come in from corporate to teach us how to use it, he was about 80 and there were lots of "uh, let me get back to you on that one".
Hopefully don't come off too much as a millennial/Gen Y, I've only experienced using AE. Out of curiosity, what's the big issues transitioning from DCF to Enterprise? I hear complaints a lot and I'm sure they are justified but are there any pronounced issues with AE itself or is it just the Argus is cancelling all support for the older version?
I could go into a full diatribe on this, but in addition to a lot of sloppy, clunky features (including significantly less efficient hotkeys), two good examples of how they bungled this rollout are the auto-save and portfolio analysis functions. I work in an environment where I have a lot of different files open at the same time, and sometimes I have too many open and it crashes the system. With DCF, if that happened, it was annoying, but for the most time my work was saved because in DCF if you entered something into the file, it stuck without having to save. With AE, when they first rolled it out, they had no auto save ability, so if you didn't hit save every few minutes and there was some reason why your system crashed (power went out, internet disconnected, etc. etc.), all of your work was lost. That is unacceptable in my opinion because that should be the first thing you think to do since you're basically creating excel on steroids for a single purpose use. The second thing is the portfolio functionality. It was so easy in DCF to roll up portfolio cash flows for 50+ property portfolios (which I do fairly often). If you try to do that now within AE software, it takes forever for the software to aggregate the consolidated schedules (CF, S&U, etc.). Pretty short-sighted for a software that is touted as 'better than DCF' for asset/portfolio management. There are also a lot of other things that are 'more minor' but are still poorly done/cumbersome, but I'd be here for hours...
People talk a lot about how they wish the technology was better in CRE but don't always provide alternative desires. What kind of software is it that you need that the incumbent companies seem to not understand?
I mean I just gave examples above of how the current software is not meeting the needs of its constituents and two simple things they should have/could do to improve it. The fact that they don't have a more efficient way to roll-up portfolio cash flows is not that 'earth shattering' of an ask IMO. I don't dislike the concept of the software we currently have or what it's trying to accomplish, I'm merely saying they aren't executing well.
But, since you opened up pandora's box, I'd love an underwriting software that took voice dictation and also provided real-time mapping re: data points for different underwriting metrics. Do I think that's going to happen? No.
People also love to shit on Co-Star for not having accurate data but are completely unwilling to share their data with Co-Star when asked lol.
Yeah they're the devil, a lot of people in my office do not like them much.
My $200/mo. to CoStar is almost worth it if I dip into the office tower next door for their weekly "lunch and learn" and eat as much catered Jason's Deli as humanly possible.
is anybody being asked to punch in a code texted to your cell phone every time you log into costar?
costar support ppl told me this was normal.
Daul verification? Probably to help avoid sharing of accounts
Wondering if you could have it link to a Google voice number where if you want to share it, you just share the google voice account with others.
Yes - I can't decide if it's more or less annoying than having your account tied to a specific machine and not being able to log in from anywhere else...
I called them asking if there's a way to not have to give them my cell phone #. They said there is but I couldn't access that way... I haven't used it since (I don't need the comps only market data so I use REIS)
Yes, the old way involved installing a license on one machine. At least this way, you can log in on any machine you want no matter where you are.
The dual verification to police account sharing sucks. As far as I know, its required every single time. Someone occasionally uses my login and I screenshot the code and send it to them via text. 25% of the time, one of us will be kicked off because of a "sharing violation" from being logged in on two separate devices (laptops in this case).
It does suck - especially because it doesn't leave you logged in for that long if you let it go idle so I end up needing to get a new code 3/4x per day. However, the old way with the unique security certificate also sucked, it is nice to be able to log in on different computers now.
I must have missed the additions to this thread but My particular CoStar login verification is out of control now. FOR EVERY LOGIN I have to verify I am trying to login on my telephone app, then scan a QR code from the computer screen, and then take a selfie of my face, no joke. I am the only one I know of that has to do this.
That is insanity
Just a heads up - we flat out told CoStar that we would drop the service on the spot if they continued to make us do this and the next day we were back to getting the code sent to our cell phones.
Wow, and I thought we had it bad with the CoStar automated text code.
I have TONS of frustrations with CoStar.
A) Their research analysts are generally morons to the point where we keep a word doc to record all the hilariously nonsensical sales notes we come across. B) I have to do that damn dual verification that was mentioned above. C) There are tons of tenants that have no tenant profile at all despite having hundreds of locations. Today's example was U.S. Renal Care, you literally cannot search by them as a tenant and they have a huge footprint.
The list goes on and on. BUT...
When was Loopnet ever some useful tool? Not trying to be a dick here, but the only use Loopnet has for me is seeing old expired listings when googling addresses to fill in missing comp data. Might just be different roles in the industry but I never find myself on loopnet.
Can you post your list? I feel like there’s some good stuff
I'll try to post some gems from it tomorrow.
Let's state the facts: (1) Everyone hates CoStar and (2) CoStar is way overpriced. It wouldn't be too hard to convince my firm and many of friends' firms to boycott CoStar. We don't dislike them, we don't hate them, we simply abhor this litigious monopoly.
I wish I could afford to share in on the annoyance of Costar! Here with the stale LoopNet data!:) Costar could have some significant automation of their data collection techniques but maybe newer management will do that someday.
Moody’s Launches CRE Data Network As Potential Competitor To CoStar
Has anyone heard what this may cost?
Moody’s bought REIS. My bank uses it. No clue what we’re paying for it but it’s definitely cheaper than CoStar. Senior bank management switched to save money and no one in my real estate group is a fan of it. It’s trash in comparison to CoStar, so much incomplete data - we often can’t get data for certain markets, they don’t provide certain asset class data in a lot of markets, their submarket divisions don’t make sense, comp data is often incomplete and unuseful, and their basic numbers (rents, vacancy, absorption) are often completely different than what’s found in every other source.
I understand databases take time to compile and maybe with the backing of Moody’s, they’ll be able to get their shit together in the next couple of years but for the time being, I would recommend staying away. We’re at the point where we use CBRE and JLL research reports more than REIS.
Everyone hates CoStar till they have to use REIS...
Anybody who is on the cmbs side will understand my pain. A deal looks can look great and very promising up until we look at the reiss submarket vacancy (especially if its a suburban office deal) and because the rating agencies mostly take into account reiss's submarket vacancy, the great deal just looks awful now and it will never execute from a securitiztion standpoint when the fitch dscr is
Costar could have some significant automation of their data collection techniques but maybe newer management will do that someday.
Anybody tried "hacking" Costar to pull comps directly into Excel? I've got friends working on it...
Not being able to export comps onto excel is one of the most bullshit things Costar has ever pulled.
you dont have the Data Export function? Sale Comps tab > search your needed area/type and on results there is a 'Data Export' button 4th from the bottom...
Anyone looked into a Costar Excel Add-in like this:
https://powerbrokersoftware.com/excel-connector-for-loopnet-costar-exce…
Not lease comps as of like 6 months ago.
It boggles my mind that no one has come in and tried to steal market share from these guys....How hard is it to find this info and compile it?
Is it really that hard to stand up to these behemoth companies?
Turns Out its really hard.
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