CoStar Group and Accruent Forming Technology and Marketing Partnership


LAS VEGAS, May 21 - Retailers who need the latest real estate market data to help them select sites for new store openings and manage the life cycle of their properties and leases with more confidence at less cost should soon have that ability, thanks to a partnership being formed between CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP), the number one provider of information services to the commercial real estate industry, and Accruent, Inc., the leading provider of Real Estate Performance Management (RPM) solutions. The formation of this partnership was announced here today at the International Council of Shopping Centers' (ICSC) Spring Convention.

The two companies are working to develop and market an integrated solution that will provide on-demand access to CoStar's commercial real estate data from within Accruent's software. Customers who choose to take advantage of this integrated system must subscribe to CoStar's property information services as well as Accruent's RPM solution.

These customers will have access to the latest retail property data and high-resolution images from CoStar's proprietary, online database of more than 2.2 million researched, verified and continuously updated commercial properties encompassing 121 metro Core Based Statistical Areas throughout the United States as well as properties in the United Kingdom and France. CoStar's researched and verified inventory includes approximately 1.7 million retail tenant locations, including America's top 5,500 retailers, as well as approximately 655,000 shopping centers, general retail properties and parcels of retail-zoned land. The joint solution is being designed to encompass CoStar data such as space availabilities, properties for sale (including land), sales comparables, store types, tenant rosters, frontage location, individual building photos and 360-degree aerials.

Once launched, the integrated solution will also automate data entry and site selection processes that are often being performed manually. For example, searching for sites with specific space availabilities, demographics and leasing or co-tenancy requirements would produce pinpoint results in a matter of minutes and virtually eliminate a retailer's need to manually enter real estate-related details for scores of store locations. The two companies are working to develop additional capabilities in the future, such as automatic alerts that, for example, would let a retailer in a shopping center know when an anchor tenant leaves or if that center's vacancy rate falls beyond a certain occupancy threshold, which could violate lease co-tenancy provisions.

"In a high-growth, high-speed industry such as retail, real estate is all about maximizing revenue," said Andrew C. Florance, president and CEO of the CoStar Group. "Every decision - whether it's to open a new store, renew a lease or remodel an existing location - is an opportunity for retailers to meet their growth targets. When entering markets and making site selection decisions, using the latest property information is critical, especially when it involves opening hundreds or thousands of new stores a year."

"As a result of this alliance, retailers should have an enormous opportunity to increase their revenues, reduce site selection and lease management costs, and have greater predictability of their business performance," Florance added. "When an Accruent user performs a property search query using the integrated system that we're planning, CoStar's market data will automatically populate the results so that key requirements such as available sites, competitor sites and market comparables can be quickly and easily identified. They will also know the asking rents on similar retail space around the country."

"Accruent's software provides a process to manage the key decisions throughout the real estate lifecycle," said Mark Friedman, CEO of Accruent. "Through our partnership with CoStar, we can incorporate current market data directly into each decision process. By automating the assembly of key information, we can provide our mutual customers the appropriate context for each decision and allow them to execute at a higher velocity, with greater confidence and ultimate success."

The initial version of this integrated solution is expected to be released in September 2007. Both companies will also continue to provide their respective products and services as stand-alone offerings.

CoStar first introduced its powerful online retail information search technology - a component of CoStar Property Professional - at the same ICSC show a year ago. It is being used today by a growing "Who's Who" of leading retail and commercial industry professionals to select sites, research markets and analyze competitors with remarkable speed, precision and simplicity, thereby compressing weeks or months of retail real estate decisions to mere minutes. This Who's Who of companies includes such major retailers and retail-related owners, developers and brokers as Chick-fil-A, Dippin' Dots, Weingarten Realty Investors, General Growth Properties, Inc. and Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust.

About CoStar Group, Inc.

CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is the number one provider of information services to commercial real estate professionals in the United States as well as the United Kingdom. CoStar's suite of services offers approximately 75,000 customers access via the Internet to the most comprehensive database of commercial real estate information in 121 metro Core Based Statistical Areas throughout the U.S. as well as in the United Kingdom and France. Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, the company has approximately 1,300 employees, including the largest professional research organization in the industry. For more information, visit www.costar.com

About Accruent

Founded in 1995, Accruent leads the industry with a new generation of solutions designed to fully leverage real estate assets and decisions as an enterprise competitive advantage. Accruent Real Estate Performance Management (RPM) solutions maximize the impact that real estate properties - stores, restaurants, local branches, and corporate offices - have on company performance by driving revenue growth, reducing costs, and achieving financial compliance. More than 340 of the world's largest companies, including 20 percent of the Fortune 500 and 40 percent of the Top 100 Retailers use Accruent's solutions. In addition, Accruent couples the broadest and deepest real estate data set and advanced business intelligence to bridge the gap between daily operations and strategy. For more information, please visit www.accruent.com.

Source: CoStar Group, Inc.

CONTACT: Audra Capas, Vice President, Communications, +1-240-620-6757, acapas@costar.com, for CoStar Group; Jill Hara of Kickstart Consulting,
+1-650-346-5204, jhara@kickstartconsulting.com, for Accruent

Web site: www.costar.com/

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