CoStar data purchase and use

[msimonson]

Hello everyone - over the years, I've heard several instances of UrbanSim users purchasing data from CoStar. Could we get some more details on what specific CoStar products have proven useful and how you have applied them to model development or application efforts? Any shortcomings you either discovered or were aware of going in would also be useful to know. We at PSRC have never directly used CoStar products in our UrbanSim model but are looking to expand our options, particularly as we move to update our code, and possibly our developer model structure, to the newer versions. Thanks much - Mark S

[dcclark]

Hello Mark,
We currently are not an UrbanSim user, but we've held a subscription to CoStar for several years now and have found it helpful for numerous applications at CMAP. It's a useful input to our development monitoring database because it can identify proposed developments that our other sources might not have picked up. It reports Rentable Building Area which can help in estimating potential employment, as well as current vacancy info. It's fairly easy to query and export records for internal use, but they do impose a 500 record-per-export limit. After explaining our need for performing regional analyses outside of their interface, they were kind enough to raise our limit to 2,000 records, but that still requires multiple, mutually-exclusive queries to download (for example) records for all retail properties in Cook County. I'd be happy to share the CMAP experience with CoStar in greater detail...you can contact me direct at dcclark@cmap.illinois.gov and I can set up a call with some of our staff that work with it on a regular basis.
David Clark,
Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP)