Pros
The company has a very nice buliding in Washington DC. They make it very comfortable for the employees and provide wellness, nice benefits, nice workstations, a great environment, and for the most part, the managers are very nice and they all are eager to assist you including senior management.
Cons
I was excited to get this job because I had used CoStar products and I thought this would really launch my career in real estate. Boy was I fooled. The research associate job is nothing but a glorified customer service rep. asking questions over the phone. You are given a quota as to how many phone calls you are required to make. They tell you that each call must be over 1 minute long. You have a script of information called "High Priority Questions" that you must ask. You must ask the real estate brokers the same questions on every call even though you already have the information. Lets say you are speaking to the secretary, you have to ask the secretary dumb questions as well. It make you seem like an idiot. They record each call and they record your computer screens, Quality assurance monitors when someone sends you a request and how long it takes you to enter it in. If you do not enter it in by close of business the same day, you are dinged for it. Even if you were not at work that day, you are still dinged for it. If another researcher makes an error on one of your properties, you are liable for the error. You will be penalized for it. You can have a perfect call but if you do not ask for additional listings, you will have a call that is unacceptable. My manager wrote the entire team up for not asking for additional listings 100% of the time. As a researcher, you harass the brokers. You have to repeatedly call them until they answer the phone. You are instructed to call them, email them, and then call them again. If they dont call you back then you are told to call the owner of the property and let them know they broker is not respoding to your calls and you are trying to help the broker sell the property. This is the ultimate sin in real estate. That broker could loose the listing because of that. You have to call the tennants and ask them how much rent they pay or the terms of their lease agreement and then costar publishes that data over the internet. They will even have you call the neighbors of the tenant and get information about the tenant. There was a guy new to the research floor who had just got out of training. Your first 90 days you are not suppose to be held accountable for meeting the performance standards sicne you are still learning. He was on the floor for 3 weeks and was written up. Our manager was an inexperienced manager. You are expected to review each call to rate your own call. After Quality Assurance reviews it, you have to dispute their findings because they only report on your worst calls. They get paid to find the bad calls not the good calls. I resigned last tuesday with a 2 weeks notice and I was walked out the door upon submitting my resignation notice. No exit interview or nothing. Dont know when I get my last check or when my insurance stops.