Talk:CoStar Group

Updates to the article

Hi, I would like to recommend some structural updates to the CoStar Group article for organization and clarity as now the article reads more like a list. Below I've included a suggested version of the History section - I added the subsections "Origins" and "Expansion," and distinguished the "Expansion" between the United States and Europe. I kept the original content but moved it into the appropriate subsections.

Revision proposal

History

Origins

CoStar Group was founded in 1987 by Andrew C. Florance in Washington, D.C. It was reportedly one of the first companies that digitized and aggregated property data before the Internet was widely available. In 1998, the company became a public company via an initial public offering on the NASDAQ, raising $22.5 million. In 2004, CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc. became a landmark case in copyright law about the role of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in monitoring copyrighted content posted on its servers.

Expansion

United States

In October 2009, the company acquired a building in, now its headquarters, from the Mortgage Bankers Association for $41.3 million. The building sold for $97 million two years earlier, and the company claims it used its analytics data to know the right time to buy. In April 2021, CoStar Group acquired the online marketing site LoopNet for $860 million. With the acquisition, CoStar Group also acquired Loopnet properties BizBuySell and LandsofAmerica.com. In April 2014, the company acquired Apartments.com for $585 million. In April 2015, the company acquired Apartment Finder for $170 million. In February 2017, the company acquired Westside Rentals. In March, the company acquired Spanish lending information platform Belbex. In February 2018, the company acquired ForRent.com from Dominion Enterprises for $350 million in cash and $35 million in stock. In November, the company acquired Cozy Services for $68 million. In February 2019, the company announced that Oxford Economics would provide the economic data and forecasts used in CoStar's products. In June, it was announced that CoStar Group would acquire Off Campus Partners, LLC, an online marketplace for off-campus student housing. In October, it was announced that CoStar Group would acquire hotel research and analytics firm STR, Inc, for $450 million. In May 2020, CoStar announced it acquired online real estate platform Ten-x, formerly Auction.com, for $190 million. In October, CoStar Group bought Germany-based real estate data company Emporis. In November, it was announced that CoStar Group acquired Homesnap, a residential mobile application provider, for $250 million in cash. In April 2021, it was announced that CoStar Group acquired Homes.com, a residential real estate website from Dominion Enterprises, for $156 million in cash. On April 22, 2024, it was announced that CoStar Group would acquire Matterport, a 3D spatial mapping company, for a cash and stock transaction deal at approximately US$1.6 billion.

Europe

In May 2016, CoStar Group's European subsidiary CoStar Europe Ltd acquired German real estate business data company Thomas Daily. In July 2016, the company acquired Belbex, an online marketplace and information provider for commercial property based in Spain, and in March the company acquired Spanish lending information platform Belbex. In October 2018, the company acquired Realla.co.uk an online marketplace for commercial property based in the United Kingdom. In October 2021, CoStar announced it was acquiring BureauxLocaux, a commercial property digital marketplace in France. In October 2023, it was announced CoStar Group had acquired the London-headquartered property portal, OnTheMarket for £100 million.

References

Thank you in advance for your help in improving the article structure. Hbensur (talk) 20:35, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I added an edit request template so someone will come by and review these changes. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:16, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Done , but there are still issues with the article, namely WP:PROSELINE. The History section seems like just a list of acquisitions, which can be converted to a list or table format (see {{List of mergers and acquisitions by}} for examples). The Criticism section is not ideal and should preferably be merged into other sections (such as History), per WP:CSECTION. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:54, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you InfiniteNexus for your help in restructuring this article! If you look below, based on your recommendation, I proposed some ideas for merging the Criticisms section into the other article sections.

Further Updates

Following the restructure of this article, I'd like to suggest adding a "Marketing" subsection under "Business" with the following information: CoStar Group purchased an estimated $35 million worth of airtime during Super Bowl LVIII for four subsidiary Super Bowl commercials (three for Homes.com and one for Apartments.com).

Second, as per InfiniteNexus's helpful recommendation, I would like to suggest moving the first two paragraphs of the "Criticism" section into the United States subsection of History so that it reads as follows:

"In April 2021, it was announced that CoStar Group acquired Homes.com, a residential real estate website from Dominion Enterprises, for $156 million in cash. In February 2022, CoStar Group came under criticism when American news website Business Insider reported that over 29 current and former employees claimed to have been excessively monitored and micromanaged, including with unscheduled check-in video calls made by the company's IT department. Additional criticism included reports of employees being publicly berated and arbitrarily fired in some cases. The company also reportedly made efforts to take down criticism of itself on various social media platforms. The company denied the complaints, claiming that discontent came from the company's high expectations. CoStar has been criticized for anticompetitive and monopolistic business practices, often using aggressive litigation and "public-relations warfare" to "push [competitors] to the brink of collapse or weaken them enough to make them soft targets for an acquisition". Competitors that CoStar has sued include 42Floors, RealMassive, Zillow, RentPath, Xcelligent (now bankrupt), and LoopNet (now a subsidiary), among others."

I suggest creating a "Legal issues" subsection under "Business" and moving the third paragraph from Criticism to that new subsection.

References

Thank you very much! Hbensur (talk) 13:22, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

@Hbensur: In the future, for a faster response, add {{Edit COI}} to the top of your request. This will add it into a centralized queue for someone to come by and review it. I've added it here for now. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Done Merged sections, added the bit about the Super Bowl commercials, and cleaned up the entire article. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

InfiniteNexus, thank you so much for all your help! The page is looking great now. Hbensur (talk) 19:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Updating information

Hi, I'd like to suggest a few more updates to this page. According to the Emporis page and this source, they have been merged into STR Germany GmbH and are no longer a functioning company. Please remove them from the list of CoStar Group's subsidiaries. Additionally, as part of updating CoStar's subsidiaries, please add their recent acquisition of Visual Lease. Pinging @InfiniteNexus who has done a lot of work on this article previously.

I've also made a few small updates to the infobox including removing Scott Wheeler, as he is no longer CFO according to Bloomberg, updating the number of employees to 6400, and updating the company website.

References

Thank you! Hbensur (talk) 14:13, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Already done InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:44, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

New update

I'd like to suggest adding the following information under the "Other activities" subsection:

In July 2024, CoStar Group was sued by competitor Move, Inc., the operator of Realtor.com, for alleged trade secret misappropriation. Move sought a preliminary injunction against CoStar Group. The injunction was denied by a California federal court on the basis that Move had not provided evidence of any irreparable harm. In April 2025, less than a year after filing its lawsuit, Move voluntarily dismissed the case. Commenting on Move’s voluntary dismissal, CoStar Group’s General Counsel Gene Boxer stated, “When this transparently baseless case was filed I described it as a pimple on the elephant of my litigation responsibilities. Today that pimple popped. Move’s case collapsed and it begged us to agree to permit its dismissal with prejudice. To be crystal clear: we didn’t settle. We agreed to nothing and paid nothing.”

References

Thank you very much! Hbensur (talk) 14:03, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @InfiniteNexus who has done a lot of work on this article previously. Hbensur (talk) 14:11, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I may look into this later when I have time, but you need to add the {{Edit COI}} template at the top of your request. InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:15, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Not done for now: Some of the requested changes are currently written in a promotional tone. Please review WP:Neutral point of view and make changes where appropriate to follow this before reopening the request. Dahawk04 (talk) 23:55, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

@Dahawk04

I didn't think the lawsuit part sounded promotional, but the quotation by the attorney did, so I have added it without the quotation.

Feel free to edit these requests to reduce promotional language and post them directly. There's no need to create delays — we're already facing 2 to 2.5 month wait periods. Having editors review twice creates extra work for everyone. If you spot minor edits that would make the content less promotional, just make them. Yolandagonzales (talk) 23:58, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Litigation section and Other activities update

Hi, in a continued effort to update this page, I have included a few requests below.

• Adding a Litigation section, which summarizes CoStar Group's various legal cases (suggested language below):

Revision proposal

Litigation

Xceligent

In December 2016, CoStar Group filed a lawsuit against rival Xceligent, owned by London-based Daily Mail and General Trust for copyright infringement of thousands of images. According to the lawsuit, Xceligent used offshore contractors in India and the Philippines to copy CoStar Group’s copyrighted photographs and crop out the CoStar Group watermark.. The court entered a $500 million judgement and permanent injunction against Xceligent, valuing each CoStar Group image at $50,000.

CREXi

United States

In September 2020, CoStar Group filed a lawsuit against rival commercial real estate marketplace, Commercial Real Estate Exchange, Inc. (CREXi). CREXi is a venture-capital-backed company valued at approximately $500 million in 2022, whose leading investor announced he expects CREXi to go public with a multi-billion-dollar valuation. The suit alleged CREXi engaged offshore contractors to copy and crop CoStar Group’s copyrighted images from LoopNet, a CoStar Group website. In June 2025, the court found significant evidence that CREXi and its contractors copied images from LoopNet, and that CoStar Group owned the photographs that they claimed were infringed.

In September 2024, CoStar Group obtained a permanent injunction against CREXi’s founding investor, Leon Capital LLC, for unauthorized access to CoStar’s database.

CREXi Contractors

Simultaneously, CoStar Group filed multiple lawsuits in India against CREXi-hired contractors, known as BPOs, for assisting in the copyright infringement. Those cases resulted in several judgments and permanent injunctions against CREXi’s offshore contractors.

Move, Inc.

In July 2024, CoStar Group competitor Move, Inc. sued CoStar Group for alleged trade secret misappropriation, seeking a preliminary injunction, which was denied due to lack of evidence. In April 2025, Move voluntarily dismissed the case with prejudice.

STR

In February 2024, a proposed consumer class action lawsuit was filed against CoStar Group in multiple states, accusing the company of a price-fixing conspiracy in which it conspired with a group of luxury hotel chains—including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, InterContinental, Loews, and Accor—to keep room rental prices artificially high by sharing competitively sensitive information through the company's STR reports. These allegations were based in part on insider information shared by an STR software engineer. In September 2025, the claims were dismissed by the court.

Zillow

CoStar Group sued Zillow in July 2025 for copyright infringement, including for using tens of thousands of CoStar Group’s watermarked photographs on its sites, as well as syndicating those photographs on Zillow’s partner sites, Redfin and Realtor.com.

• Merging the STR content from "Other activities" into the proposed litigation section and removing the duplicate information from "Other activities.
• Adding the following to the end of "Other activities:"

CoStar Group has denied these allegations. CoStar Group’s founder and CEO, Andy Florance responded that “CoStar Group does not have a litigation problem. CoStar Group has a theft problem. We’re not talking about CoStar Group litigating in 10 cases over 30 years and losing them. We’re talking about CoStar Group litigating in 10 cases over 30 years and winning them all.”

References

Thank you, Hbensur (talk) 16:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

• All edits are completed. Yolandagonzales (talk) 09:29, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for all the updates to the article! Hbensur (talk) 15:40, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Other activities section

Hi all, I have some ideas to rework the "Other activities" section for WP:NPOV and balance. I would be interested in others' thoughts.

• The second sentence of the second paragraph (beginning with, "In February 2024") now appears in the later STR section. Please remove it from "Other activities".

• In the first paragraph, please add the following highlighted piece:

In 2019, CoStar Group announced that Oxford Economics would provide the economic data and forecasts used in its products. The company came under fire in 2022 when Business Insider,whose parent company is Axel Springer, which owns several CoStar Group competitors, reported that over 29 current and former employees claimed to have been excessively monitored and micromanaged, including with unscheduled check-in video calls made by the company's IT department, as well as being publicly berated and arbitrarily fired in some cases.

• In the second paragraph I suggest replacing the current first sentence as follows, summarizing the quote (see MOS:QUOTE), and adding CoStar Group's response from the same reference:

CoStar Group has been criticized for anticompetitive and monopolistic business practices and accused of using aggressive litigation in order to weaken their competitors for acquisition. The company has denied these allegations, explaining that it has only pursued legal action to enforce its intellectual property and database rights. CoStar Group's legal action has resulted in numerous judgments and settlements in the company's favor.

References

Thanks. Hbensur (talk) 19:22, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

@Hbensur:, your first request should actually be opposite per WP:NOCRIT. Please revisit and make sure you are asking for the correct change. --CNMall41 (talk) 23:29, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Since the "Legal cases" section is not critical in nature and explains a component of CoStar Group's activities, I believe it is not problematic. The specific paragraph I requested to remove is duplicated in the STR subsection so it should be removed from "Other activities". Hope this clarifies things and that you'll consider implementing the changes. Thanks, Hbensur (talk) 21:09, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

You can ping me here for any additions. No need to leave a talk page message as it duplicates your work. To be clear, you are asking for the removal of something in the history section which is duplicated under the legal cases section. Is that correct?--CNMall41 (talk) 20:40, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi CNMall41, yes, please remove the duplicate language from the History section. I also included two other requests to the first paragraph of the "Other activities" section, if you wouldn't mind adding that. Thanks! Hbensur (talk) 20:51, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I will leave for another reviewer as I am not willing to keep WP:NOCRIT information in favor of historical context. --CNMall41 (talk) 19:32, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

@Hbensur: Thanks for the ping on my talk page. I'm going to look more thoroughly at the second proposal. However, for the portion cited to Insider with, I'm inclined towards either removing or tagging {{better source needed}} per WP:INSIDER. I'll give at least a little bit of time to see if any other editors can chime in with suggestions on this. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi Pbritti, thanks for taking a closer look at this section. I initially aimed to add context to the Insider story for WP:BALANCE. However, if you do not see the current text as aligning with guidelines such as WP:NPOV, it would make sense to remove it. As you consider this, could you please remove the duplicate content from the “Other activities” section (the second sentence of the second paragraph, beginning “In February 2024”), as it appears again later in the STR subsection? Thanks, Hbensur (talk) 17:22, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

In the context of this edit request, this bit, also in the Other activities section, is worth notice: The company made efforts to take down criticism of itself on various social media platforms.

I have removed the duplicated STR information and introduced paragraph breaks in the Other activities section.

Hbensur seems to be accusing Business Insider of non-impartiality in their reporting. The story was picked up by other outlets: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. This all seems to point back at the Business Insider investigation though. ~Kvng (talk) 20:10, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi Kvng, thanks for removing the duplicated content and adding the paragraph breaks, the section is much cleaner. Regarding the Business Insider content, my intent was to provide context and balance, but I've gone ahead and closed the request. I appreciate your help here. Hbensur (talk) 15:57, 17 June 2026 (UTC)