CoStar Group is flying high. Literally. The real estate information company now employs a military-grade reconnaissance plane to photograph multifamily construction occurring across the country.
Tracking building permits offers some insight into new construction, but it doesnt provide the whole picture. To get a better sense of all construction, CoStar used to send out employees in cars for an on-the-ground view of a metro area.
It would take CoStar, for example, a year to fully cover the Baltimore area [with employees in cars]; with the small Cessna plane and mapping system, it can do it in three days, with far more accuracy and cost efficiency, reports CNBC.
CoStar uses this information to inform multifamily clients of new constructionfor example, helping an apartment community owner better set rents given future competition or helping investors make more educated investment decisions.
CoStar also owns apartments.com, so finding new construction activity means more potential advertising revenue from the site.
In the past year, CoStar claims it discovered 250,000 apartment units under construction that no one from the traditional information sources knew about, says the CNBC article.