CoStar Group reviews

2.7

33% would recommend to a friend

(3,020 total reviews)
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Andrew C. Florance

31% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

CoStar Group has an employee rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, based on 3,020 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The CoStar Group employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Real Estate industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
Mar 11, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Entry-level experience.. if you're okay with hating your job then it's fine.

Cons

You'll never ever get to come up with an original idea and contribute it. You have no sense of autonomy at all. There's no creativity, decision-making, or control over your career or your DAY. You are simply told exactly what to do, and are expected to do it (the same exact thing, everyday, for 8 hours...). Your own ideas or opinions are not welcome or encouraged. This is a very monotonous job, with no room for growth or promotion. Even the managers I feel bad for. They are taught a terrible management style. Management is so petty, controlling, gossip-driven, and they really mimic bullying in some ways. Once they decide they don't like you, they will make your life hell in every way possible. Also, the surveillance of employees is disturbing. Overall, I look back at my time at CoStar and thank the stars above I'm not there anymore. I absolutely LOVE my job now and see an incredible difference between a company run correctly and CoStar's train wreck. I can't express to you enough..... DON'T WORK THERE. It's degrading.

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CoStar Group Response
11y
As an entry level role, researchers start out by building up skills and knowledge to be able to do the job. As more experience is gained, researchers are able to take on new responsibilities, which give greater freedom by becoming a trusted source of information by clients, a lead on projects and more. Our clearly designed career paths allow researchers to choose what direction they would like to work toward – whether it’s a managerial or analytic role. As does any other company providing a service via phone, we record our phone calls to be able to check for quality assurance, but also so our researchers can listen back to their own calls and check for any details they may have missed while inputting information into the system. This is to provide researchers with the right instruction to be able to grow and develop further in their career with the right tools, not about surveillance. To ensure they are using the best communication possible, our managers are regularly given the opportunity to attend training on developing positive working relationships with their employees. Similar training sessions are now being offered to our senior research associates as well, so they can develop necessary managerial skills prior to taking on a formal manager role. Some roles are just not for everyone. It sounds like you have found one that is better suited to you.
1.0
Mar 5, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Snacks in break room. Very nice office. Shuttle to and from Metro Center. Ability to attend off site 3rd party Improvement courses (i.e. Excel advancement). Room for moving up

Cons

Very long hours in order to complete your job with no end in sight. The more you work, the more recognition given. Lack of job flexibility. It's clear that within upper management there is a lot of friction. Lack of communication interdepartmentally.

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CoStar Group Response
11y
What does stem from the CEO is the extensive list of benefits offered to employees and continuing education opportunities. Many of our employees recognize that, and work hard to produce amazing results. This is a competitive industry, and as a result many of our employees are naturally competitive and willing to put in extra work to shine, which we can’t see as a negative. As with any corporation, we want to reward those who go above and beyond for their company, and while it can be tough at times that is the nature of our contract specialist role. As you said, we encourage our employees to be able to grow at CoStar Group and love to see people develop new skills and be promoted to new positions. Particularly for our contract specialists, we know they work very hard to meet the needs of a company that’s growing rapidly in the number and size of contracts we work with on a daily basis. With time, that department will continue to grow as well to appropriately meet the needs of our clients. Our upper management works very well together, and the success of the company is a testament to that. CoStar Group has become the industry standard for accuracy and amount of commercial real estate information, and we continue to move toward even greater achievement.
2.0
Mar 5, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ Good benefits package, much better than most benefit packages in the private sector. + Free food, snacks and transit reimbursement. + Solid base pay (but bonus was another thing).

Cons

+ Metrics, hands down. Insane focus on them, even to the point of being highly counterproductive. Even better, I found out management was deliberately slowing down the CRM client at the end of the bonus period to diminish the bonuses researchers qualified for. I thought at first I was just being paranoid, but then found irrefutable evidence supporting it. Deep credibility loss of the company at this point, especially since they quietly buried my findings. + 2 minute phone calls. Had a top multifamily client who initially was providing essential data, but never ending continuous calls and harassment by sales and other researchers reversed the high profile client's relationship completely and refused to provide ANY information going forward. I don't blame the researchers/sales at all, they had to keep up with their calls somehow. Also, just FYI, one reason you lost a major client in my market (who shall remain nameless) was due to the phone calls. So, good decision to keep this "award winning" metric. + Bonuses. Was told I did everything necessary to earn a bonus one quarter, and it was not paid out despite verbal assurances from Director. That's NOT ok, I kept my end of the bargain in every measure, but the company refused to honor their end of the bargain, and were quite aggressively arrogant about it as well. Needless to say, after that, I merely focused on minimum standards. Why waste my time and resources to end up with nothing? Well, ok, I did get something, a lack of motivation that the clients could read like a book, even over the phone. And no, I wasn't deliberately unmotivated, just kind of hard to keep positive when your misleading me for nonsensical reasons. + Culture. Based on backstabbing, gossip, and frivolous reasons for getting people fired. As much as the company denies this, it's pretty obvious. I was there for 8 plus years, pulling the wool over my eyes is not going to work at this stage. I have every reason to believe the petty culture will continue. Ironically, I was on the good end of this culture, but felt silently ashamed to be a part of it. + Big Brother Atmosphere. People were afraid to hang out in the break room, for good reason. People felt it was bugged, and some conversations I overheard between managers, directors and even VPs confirmed they were at least spying on their employees in weird ways. Yes, it's your company, but does management have enough to do? Maybe 2 minute phone calls for each manager, that way you can keep them busy and explain the overhead to the stockholders.

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CoStar Group Response
11y
We appreciate the feedback, but I wish you would have shared it before you left the company two years ago, as it would have been far more relevant and useful. Our company has massively grown in the last two years and the research department has changed significantly. I have no knowledge of management attempting to reduce bonus opportunities for employees, but Research Associate bonuses are based on a more qualitative assessment now reviewed by both the manager and director to examine that researchers are being awarded fairly. All researchers aside from those on a clearly communicated corrective action plan receive quarterly bonuses. Since you left two years ago, we turned our focus away from quantitative metrics to examine the quality of work our researchers are able to do, and as a result we have seen great progress in the accuracy of our work. But your claims about the company spying on its employees are pretty far-fetched. I can assure you no one has the time to sit and listen to break room conversations.
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