According to Bloomberg Businessweek and The Associated Press, the CoStar Group Inc has agreed to buyout its rival company, LoopNet by the end of 2011.
This deal is said to be worth around $860 million.
LoopNet has been a standard for Commercial Real Estate Professionals for the following services:
Commercial Real Estate Listing Service
Market Analytics
Sales Comps
Commercial Real Estate News
Auction and Distressed Properties
Search Businesses for Sale
Property Research
LoopNet has a free-service option as well as a paid Premium Member option. In order to access certain features such as Premium Listings and Recent Sales, you need to be a paid subscriber.
CoStar has been a standard for Commercial Real Estate Professionals for all of the above listed services, as well as leasing comps, etc.
They expect to experience cross-selling opportunities amongst the two organization's customer bases.
Both LoopNet and CoStar are showing favorably in the stock market at the present time, posting their highest growth percentages since 2007. It is CoStar's expectation to reduce costs by around $20 million by 2013. Ninety-four percent of their revenue is attributed to subscription earnings.
What does this mean for LoopNet and CoStar current subscribers? The details of the transition and its execution remain to be seen. However, the marriage of these two powerhouses of Commercial Real Estate data should prove to be very beneficial to those of us operating in this struggling arena. One "all-encompassing" source of Commercial Real Estate information is very beneficial to any brokerage looking to improve efficiency and reduce in-direct costs. From personal experience, the time you spend researching a property, all of its comparables and the submarket it is seated in can be tedious at times. Bringing the majority of this information under "one roof" seems to make good sense to me. What do you think?
