CoStar just launched a nifty little mashup showing all searches, property listings and comparable sales records on their website as they are created in real time. I once saw something similar at the Metrobrokers office in Atlanta. I thought to myself wow this is neat but what real use does it have other than drawing some attention to its creator.  It’s really more of a marketing gimmick than a useful analytical tool, but I’d like to hear your comments.

CoStar and Loopnet have been in a heated contest for market share. CoStar is the established commercial real estate data provider with products that track sale and lease transactions, market research data, as well as provide leads on tenants that may have a lease up for renewal. Loopnet entered the market in the late 90’s almost 2 decades after CoStar. Loopnet has only recently added products that track comparable sales and provide market research data. From the beginning, Loopnet was a listing service and it has grown quickly by providing web visitors what they want most: property listings.

Until this Spring, CoStar only allowed paid members to search their database of listings, comps, and leases. Loopnet has always allowed free searches of premium property listing ads. CoStar’s argument for the longest time was that Loopnet would one day cut out brokers by allowing principals to have direct access to the holy grail of commercial real estate — the listings. Whether or not CoStar is correct is a topic for another post.

CoStar finally relented and opened their for lease and for sale listings to the public to search for free.  Only the premium listings and some random sampling of the non-premium listings are displayed.  CoStar is in the process of up-selling premium listings to their existing broker subscriber base and currently don’t appear to have enough premium listings for most searches to provide useful results.  This is whey they include a random sampling of basic listings in the free search.  Paid searchers see all properies premium and basic.

Earlier this year, Loopnet issued a press release claiming it’s traffic was 9.9 times greater than that of costar.com.  Compete.com is showing Loopnet has a strong lead by not quite the 10 fold lead of earlier this year.  I expect, CoStar will gain on Loopnet in the coming months by virtue of the fact they have opened their data up to public search.  The surprise in the Compete comparison is Catylist.com.  This site is working closely with the national realtors trade group and may become the commercial equivalent of REALOR.com on the residential side of the business.