From left: Peter Lowe, Danielle Pinto, Trey Kern, Julie Jones Mishler. (Courtesy CoStar)
As it prepares to bolster its local operations on the ground with a new office in the West End, a well-known real estate research firm is also doing some recon in the skies over Richmond.
CoStar Group next month will open its first Richmond office in the Meridian Building at 1800 Bayberry Court.
The Washington, D.C.-based firm marked its arrival last week with the help of its company plane packed with high-tech equipment to get a bird’s-eye view of the local real estate scene.
Founded in 1987, CoStar Group’s core product is its searchable online database of commercial real estate properties used by developers, lenders, brokers, appraisers and vendors. CoStar owns LoopNet, a listing and advertising site for properties, and Apartments.com, a rental listing site. CoStar opened a Norfolk office earlier this month – its first in Virginia.
CoStar collects a database of commercial real estate property information, like this aerial view of VCU Institute for Contemporary Art. (Courtesy CoStar)
“The impetus behind opening the Richmond office was Richmond has been a really fast-growing market for CoStar and we don’t see a slowdown in that trend,” said Julie Mishler, a CoStar account executive working out of the new local office.
Mishler and Danielle Pinto are leading the company’s push into the area. Mishler graduated from University of Virginia and was previously with SNL Financial. Pinto, CoStar’s Richmond regional director, is a graduate of Christopher Newport University and working on an MBA from William and Mary. Before linking up with CoStar, Pinto worked for Electronic Systems Inc.
The 3,300-square-foot Richmond office will start out with seven or eight people servicing CoStar’s current Richmond clients and drumming up new business. Mishler said CoStar has had Richmond-based users of its products going back 10 years and the company currently has about 365 paid subscribers in the Richmond area.
The initial team moving into the Richmond office will be around a dozen people and is expected to grow. About 10 researchers based out of CoStar’s Washington, D.C. headquarters will support the office by interviewing real estate players around town and driving by sites for pictures.
Above ground, CoStar’s airplane is fitted with what the company described as military-grade photography and video equipment. It uses the plane to identify new construction sites to help analyze what’s coming out of the ground. The plane is kept in Virginia, but spends most of its time flying over 50 markets, each twice a year.
Overall, the company tracks more than 380 markets and 2,500 submarkets in North America and Europe. The CoStar database has about 19,522 Richmond-area commercial properties on file. The properties are for sale, for lease or off the market.
The company’s latest intel on the Richmond office market showed a market-wide vacancy rate of 9.1 percent, and the average rental rate stayed at $17.73, both on par with stats from the first quarter. Zooming in, vacancy in the central business district at the end of the second quarter was 11 percent – 0.4 percent less than it was in the previous quarter. The suburban market closed out Q2 with an 8.4 percent vacancy rate – 0.1 percent higher than it was in Q1.
CoStar reports the total office inventory in Richmond comprises 63.46 million square feet across 3,140 buildings.
From left: Peter Lowe, Danielle Pinto, Trey Kern, Julie Jones Mishler. (Courtesy CoStar)
As it prepares to bolster its local operations on the ground with a new office in the West End, a well-known real estate research firm is also doing some recon in the skies over Richmond.
CoStar Group next month will open its first Richmond office in the Meridian Building at 1800 Bayberry Court.
The Washington, D.C.-based firm marked its arrival last week with the help of its company plane packed with high-tech equipment to get a bird’s-eye view of the local real estate scene.
Founded in 1987, CoStar Group’s core product is its searchable online database of commercial real estate properties used by developers, lenders, brokers, appraisers and vendors. CoStar owns LoopNet, a listing and advertising site for properties, and Apartments.com, a rental listing site. CoStar opened a Norfolk office earlier this month – its first in Virginia.
CoStar collects a database of commercial real estate property information, like this aerial view of VCU Institute for Contemporary Art. (Courtesy CoStar)
“The impetus behind opening the Richmond office was Richmond has been a really fast-growing market for CoStar and we don’t see a slowdown in that trend,” said Julie Mishler, a CoStar account executive working out of the new local office.
Mishler and Danielle Pinto are leading the company’s push into the area. Mishler graduated from University of Virginia and was previously with SNL Financial. Pinto, CoStar’s Richmond regional director, is a graduate of Christopher Newport University and working on an MBA from William and Mary. Before linking up with CoStar, Pinto worked for Electronic Systems Inc.
The 3,300-square-foot Richmond office will start out with seven or eight people servicing CoStar’s current Richmond clients and drumming up new business. Mishler said CoStar has had Richmond-based users of its products going back 10 years and the company currently has about 365 paid subscribers in the Richmond area.
The initial team moving into the Richmond office will be around a dozen people and is expected to grow. About 10 researchers based out of CoStar’s Washington, D.C. headquarters will support the office by interviewing real estate players around town and driving by sites for pictures.
Above ground, CoStar’s airplane is fitted with what the company described as military-grade photography and video equipment. It uses the plane to identify new construction sites to help analyze what’s coming out of the ground. The plane is kept in Virginia, but spends most of its time flying over 50 markets, each twice a year.
Overall, the company tracks more than 380 markets and 2,500 submarkets in North America and Europe. The CoStar database has about 19,522 Richmond-area commercial properties on file. The properties are for sale, for lease or off the market.
The company’s latest intel on the Richmond office market showed a market-wide vacancy rate of 9.1 percent, and the average rental rate stayed at $17.73, both on par with stats from the first quarter. Zooming in, vacancy in the central business district at the end of the second quarter was 11 percent – 0.4 percent less than it was in the previous quarter. The suburban market closed out Q2 with an 8.4 percent vacancy rate – 0.1 percent higher than it was in Q1.
CoStar reports the total office inventory in Richmond comprises 63.46 million square feet across 3,140 buildings.
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