CoStar Group Reviews

Cons

There is a lot of misconceptions about the research associate position. They do tell you in the interview that you will be making phone calls to your account. They in no way, shape, or form, tell you that calling is your only job function. They require you to make twenty, 90 second calls per day to a portfolio of people that you call everyday. Overall, they expect 80 calls per day and only 20 have to count. Think outbound telemarketer. They then publically display your call stats and rank you amongst your peers. The turnover rate is very high as people soon realize that they did not just spend an astronomical amount of money on school to work at an outbound call center collecting real estate data. It's literally a revolving door at CoStar. Don't expect to be able to transfer your skills unless you are looking at other call center opportunities. Also, the salaries for a Research Associate are a flat rate. There is zero room for negotion. So if you have a Masters and work experience, you make just as much as a fresh college grad with zero experience. It is definitely a degrading feeling to know that they do not value your education or experience. Also, they do not pay based on locality so those in major markets make less than the rural areas.

Cons

Workflow is boring and repetitive. No changes in process make them believe that they have this figured out, but needs innovation.

Cons

Their product isn't needed in some states (like mine) where commercial real estate data is READILY available. Products are ridiculously overpriced and they make it confusing for customers to cancel or decline renewal of their services.

Cons

The workplace is generally inflexible with office hours and working from home (not great if you're a parent). Change happens fast, so planning ahead for anything can be difficult. Employees at times feel undervalued.

Cons

Research is a call center. It's a well paid call center, and it's not telemarketing, but it's a call center. Performance metrics frequently change, poor communication regarding changes. Highly repetitive work, very little analysis or creativity required.

The company has decided that the best way to gather data is by having a conversation with every broker, every month. Honestly, I agree.

The problem is that it is an ideal result and ideal results are hard to achieve. Some brokers have neither the time nor the inclination to have a detailed call each month. It's tough to have a quality conversation with a busy broker when they know you're not buying, they had the same conversation last month, and they're not a CoStar client. Brokers frequently ask researchers not to call, or to call administrative assistants, or to email. However, metrics require researchers to have a phone conversation with the broker and therefore these requests are often ignored. Most researchers do the best they can to keep things civil while also hitting their metrics, meaning they email an admin for the bulk of the data then place a (sometimes meaningless) call to the broker and pretend to have some clarifying questions in order to speak long enough for the call to register.

Additionally, there are frequent changes to how the metrics are calculated. Managers can't, or won't, explain how some metrics are calculated. It is incredibly disheartening when a manager cannot explain why a call didn't flow through to the metrics correctly, especially when their best advice is to make up a reason to call back tomorrow.

Most of all, you start to feel like quality work for actual clients is discouraged. There's very little incentive to work on client requests when the only praise and rewards come from hitting call metrics.

At the end of the day, anyone can simply get by in this job. If you want to excel, you can't care about what the brokers think or say about you. You have to be willing to get chewed out by a broker in July and then call them every day for two weeks in August until they answer. You have to be willing to dial 80, 90, 100 times every day to hit your numbers. Brokers, even clients, will block your number, hang up as soon as they hear CoStar, or swear at you. Your manager will expect you to start dialing as soon as you punch in and to keep dialing until you hit your metrics, regardless of whether you finished your data entry and client requests from yesterday.

Cons

They rate your performance heavily on metrics that don't necessarily take into account the importance of building relationships with clients. They also place so much weight on phone calls (and how long they are) to judge how good you are at your job. For a tech company it's a really out of touch way to gain information when your clients don't even want to talk to you anyway.

Cons

Aggressive growth model isn't for everyone. Strategies shift often without proper planning.

Cons

Some people are uncomfortable with change, and CoStar is a very adaptive company that often times changes direction. As a tenured employee I can say that I feel confident in the direction that upper management is taking the company as I have been through many changes, acquisitions and changes in company directives and the company and me personally have always come out on top.

Cons

none except for the last minute projects

Cons

The particular position was a dead-end call center. people work the same post for 5-6 years making dials to anyone and everyone telling them to buy on the phone. While the rest of the company progresses, this department will only slap a new title on you and have you do the exact same thing. Take this as a gig and not as a career.