CoStar Group to bring new research headquarters, 730 new jobs to Downtown Richmond

A leading provider or commercial real estate services and analytics is making a major investment in Richmond, it was announced Monday afternoon. CoStar Group, Inc. selected the Capital City for its research operations headquarters, which will encompass several floors of the WestRock building Downtown. The move will create approximately 730 jobs in town and invest $250 million into the local economy.

The company creates and delivers the information, marketing, and analytic tools that facilitate the vast majority of commercial real estate transactions in the United States. The CoStar research team curates and certifies information on approximately $1 trillion of potential real estate transactions and tracks billions of dollars of completed deals.

The 125,000 square feet of office space CoStar will lease represents the largest office space transaction to date in 2016 in the city. The company will also be one of the city’s largest employers.

The company says in an average month, 25 million people visit CoStar Group’s family of websites to lease, buy, or analyze a wide range of office, industrial, retail or farm properties. CoStar operates properties like Apartments.com, BizBuySell, LoopNet, and more.

“Our researchers play a very important role in our economy by helping growing businesses find the offices, stores, land, industrial properties or multifamily locations that are essential to their success,” said Andrew Florance, CoStar Group Founder and CEO. “We employ a highly educated and motivated work force and chose Richmond as the ideal environment in which to grow our company because it offers access to an incredibly strong higher education system and a great quality of life.”

The new Richmond center is expected to be a technology innovation hub, powering the software development necessary to support the trillions of pieces of content making up the big data behind CoStar’s success.

“We’re excited to welcome CoStar Group’s new research center to Richmond, which will make the company one of the largest employers in our city,” said Governor Terry McAuliffe. “CoStar Group’s track record for success, environmental responsibility, professional development programs, and commitment to community outreach reflects the type of company we know our residents would be fortunate to be a part of.”