{"id":1004211792,"date":"2011-05-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commercialsearch.com\/news\/cpe-uncategorized\/costar-loopnet-reputation\/1004211792.html"},"modified":"2021-05-15T06:24:49","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T14:24:49","slug":"costar-loopnet-reputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.commercialsearch.com\/news\/costar-loopnet-reputation\/","title":{"rendered":"JC Goldenstein: Who is Influencing Perceptions about the CoStar LoopNet Deal Online and What Are They Saying?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently seen online: \u201cCoStar to Buy LoopNet in $860M Deal. Wow. Headlines Used to Only Be About Both Companies Suing One Another\u2026Hello @Google. Are you building a competing #CRE listing solution?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\""JC<\/a>

JC Goldenstein CREOpoint Founder and CEO<\/p><\/div>\n

As expected after a recession, the big continue to get bigger. Further to recent deals involving ARGUS Software, DTZ, Newmark and ProLogis, CoStar announced on April 27th an agreement to acquire LoopNet for $860m.<\/p>\n

Having recently founded a company in the online space, I followed with interest this exit by LoopNet founders. So \u00a0first, congratulations to the founders of CoStar and LoopNet who took great personal risks and changed how our \u00a0industry does business.<\/p>\n

As the acquisition news broke, I did not even have time to think about how organizations like NAR, Bloomberg, \u00a0Moody\u2019s, DMGI and the CBREs of this world would react. The phone began to ring. Many brokerage firms \u00a0who buy our trusted insights were eager to learn what was being said online, and asked us what the CREObuzz \u2122<\/a> was.<\/p>\n

From the instantaneous reaction of blogs and forums to traditional news sources, we instantly know what is being said across the 10,000 CRE-relevant sources CREOpoint monitors. We uniquely filtered through the numerous broker\u2019s listings as well as the numerous references currently in the press from the Cannes Film Festival, where stars, costars and fans created so much irrelevant online noise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

As we narrowed about one million articles a month down, we found 1,085 relevant online conversations in 485 sources during the period April 27-May 10, including many from members of the CREOpoint community. For example we found insightful comments from brokers, lawyers, IT and publishing professionals like Bo Barron, Chris Clark, Coy Davidson, Dave Lewand, David Bodamer, David Stejkowski, David Niles, Duke Long, John Reeder, Joe Stampone, Paul Brokmeyer, Richard Harris and Robert Pliska among others.<\/p>\n

Commercial Property Executive<\/em> asked CREOpoint to share some of theCREObuzz \u2122<\/a> highlights regarding the industry\u2019s reaction to the acquisition. People agreed that there was a clear fit between Research and Marketing, and between CoStar physical presence and LoopNet e-commerce site. John Reeder from Sperry Van Ness thought that LoopNet\u2019s less people-intensive business model was more scalable and profitable. Since CoStar was trading at 90X earnings they may have decided to pull the trigger before being overtaken by LoopNet.\u00a0 Was this a case of buy or be bought? The big questions now are how will the industry react, and will the real estate industry ultimately accept it?<\/p>\n

The sentiment was mixed. There was agreement that the combined company would be a “strong” (569 online mentions) “giant” “winner”. Both CEOs Andrew Florance and Richard Doyle had pushed upbeat messages about innovation, cost reduction and cross selling. However after the initial positive reactions and despite CoStar waving not raising their prices the last couple years, most of the buzz ended up being about the \u201cI own the market\u201d culture of CoStar and likely price increases:<\/p>\n