CoStar Group, a commercial real estate information/marketing solutions provider this month announced the launched CoStar Showcase, an online property marketing service. The new service will serve as a platform for commercial real estate professionals to showcase their available properties to a broad online audience.
CoStar.com boasts traffic of more than 1.3 million unique visitors each quarter; traffic which will potentially view the listings featured on CoStar Showcase. CoStar expects additional traffic to be driven by the major search engines.
Visitors to the CoStar Showcase don't have to register, and can search the for-lease and for-sale commercial property listings for free. Listings can be searched by location, available space, and rental rate or sale price range.
CoStar is only allowing listings from commercial real estate professionals to appear on the Showcase to ensure their quality and accuracy. Listings will include the listing broker's telephone number and email address.
Listing information is taken from CoStar's commercial property database, which the company expects will also help maintain the accuracy of the listings. This also makes posting listings an easy task, since text doesn't need to be keyed in and images have already been uploaded.
According to CoStar, the company has already signed more than $1 million in presale subscriptions for the Showcase, which includes subscriptions with more than 100 commercial brokerage firms in the U.S.
The launch of CoStar Showcase will undoubtedly increase CoStar's presence in the commercial real estate market and effectively convert the company into a one-stop shop for its already established customer base.
Because CoStar already has a vibrant database in this space, such a move really makes sense. Essentially, it's just another way to package the data. But such packaging can really benefit CoStar customers through a larger venue to reach potential real estate customers and generate more leads. So with not much legwork, CoStar is poised to help its customers solve their biggest problems.
In today's tight real estate market, real estate brokers really do need all the help they can get in marketing their properties. So the promise of reaching CoStar's 1.3 million quarterly site visitors will certainly appeal to many. The time could be just right for such a launch.