CoStar Group releases iPad app in New York

CoStarGo iPad app

CoStar Group is releasing its iPad application CoStarGo in New York City today, the third city after Dallas and Atlanta where CoStar is making the product available, CEO Andrew Florance said at a presentation this morning. The app allows real estate professionals to access CoStar’s nationwide building information outside the office easily, whether at a building site, “on [Amtrak’s] Acela” or in a taxicab, he said. That makes the real estate business more efficient, and “a little more fun,” he added. The app is free to CoStar Suite subscribers.

At the presentation at Costar’s Manhattan headquarters Manhattan at 1177 Sixth Avenue, Florance demonstrated how the app uses GPS information to display maps, property information, photographs and floor plans for any building and its surrounding area, including data about which buildings are for sale and what recent deals have occurred.

The app could help brokers look up information for clients, he said, “if they saw some property on Madison Avenue with blue doors,” and wanted to know further details. When at a meeting or in transit, Florance said, brokers could research properties in seconds without having to return to their office.

Brokers can also drill down to submarkets, such as Grand Central, and see information about property owners or landlords and contact them through the app using email or videoconferencing, or look up additional information online about a corporation that owns property, including public records. Users can also email their clients directly through the app.

Instead of needing to carry around files during building tours, the app “gives access to 800 researchers in an eight-ounce device,” Florance said. In the future, CoStar also plans to add the ability to look up deals in Europe.

Over the next year, CoStar also plans to redesign its website in part based on its experience with the functionalities of the iPad app. The app will also incorporate data from LoopNet, once the companies complete their merger at the end of the year.

“I think the app would be helpful,” Philip Silverstein, managing director of NAI Global, one of several real estate pros at this morning’s presentation,  told The Real Deall after the presentation. He said he would welcome the ability to look up information quickly “without being chained to the desk.”