CoStar offers a platform for real estate management needs.
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kvCORE
Score 3.9 out of 10
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The kvCORE platform is described by the vendor, Inside Real Estate in Draper, as a next-gen solution for modern brokerages and enterprises to run their entire business on one platform.
Gen-Y and younger will have no problem learning how to use CoStar but its not very intuitive for the older generations (they have to hunt and peck for what they are looking for and have no idea how to manipulate the reporting features)
I think if you have a very large brokerage and can afford to pay for a fully customized set up then it may be worthwhile. I would make sure you have a dedicated support team, not an account manager. In my opinion, the account managers are worthless and will not respond most of the time. We are on our second account manager in 9 months of using the system and cannot get in touch with him. In my experience, the account managers have no knowledge of how the system works or how anyone in real estate would want it to work. Obviously, I can only say this for the two managers we have had so far. I would steer clear of this system unless you want to spend a few thousand a month for a system that, I feel, will impede your business rather than improve it.
It sends unwanted canned responses to potential clients that you haven't approved. You must figure out how to use it to make them stop. This was day 1.
If you like to learn using many many different videos to learn a product, then this maybe for you.
In our market (Portland, OR), not enough users implement the tools that could make CoStar so much better. For example, I specialize in medical but brokers and owners don't take the time to mark medical as an approved use in their buildings so I have to search much longer and cross-reference the data by contacting the brokers directly.
I find it really annoying that when I download documents CoStar doesn't use smart technology to automatically name my files. It is especially irritating since every piece of marketing we post to CoStar has a relevant file name yet when we download the same file we have to rename it.
Their support is good, but wait times can be long. They want you to use their chat, but then when you ask your question, it can be a several hour wait time between responses. The people are nice and resolve your issue. But I think chat is for quick back and forth communication, not something with a long delay. Also, you can only really do it effectively on your computer, not on your phone.
It's proving very tough to track leads from campaigns we are running ourselves. If your website converts a lead, it really just gives you the website source, and even that only some of the time. It would be great to create custom sources and have kvCORE track that traffic and lead via some sort of UTM tag or URL parameter.
Some of the load times aren't great. When I load up my database, it takes a while to actually display. Also, when a lead is claimed in a pond, you have to refresh to be able to contact them. Then once you add a campaign, you have to refresh again to see the tasks that fire. This is a bit clunky.
The app is great, but there is still some limited functionality. It would be great to access and claim leads from a pond on the mobile app. Also if you could get push notifications when new leads are added. Our time to lead sucks, and that's because kvCORE doesn't alert you super quickly.
It doesn't deserve a zero because you can access contacts and get reminders to contact them. In my experience, you can not use the system for proper communication with both prospects and their spouses.
I love kvCORE's support. Having the little chat feature in the bottom right of my screen the whole time I'm working takes away any stress or worry about using it. When I first started using it, I learned its features by clicking and trying things, and more than once I had to go into the chat support and ask how to undo or fix what I had done. I don't think I've ever waited more than 5 minutes to get a reply back and it being almost instant and right there on my screen allowed me to continue working and know immediately when my question had been answered.
There is literally not one good thing that I can say about CoStar. They charge my card $450/month because I signed a one-year contract. They provide very little data and properties and most of the time it is inaccurate. Their customer service is atrocious. They overpromise, underdeliver. STAY away from using Costar!
Konversion and BoomTown are the only two I have used. Both have their things to recommend. Since I used Konversion, using kvCORE was simpler and I was able to upload my contacts seamlessly. This made adopting a new system easier and less likely to have a gap in contacting customers.
Since CoStar has linked with LoopNet we have had fewer bad data calls. By which I mean old data from LoopNet that was available to the general public is now more regularly updated through CoStar so we have less confusion with our clients.
