For your mental health and wellbeing, stay away. - Research Associate CoStar Group Employee Review

2.0
Mar 27, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits are decent. Break room with snacks. I was lucky enough to have a helpful and fun team to work with, and manager. Pay seems well, until you realize the amount of stress and work you have to deal with and that clients DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU. Training is paid in full including hotel, food, etc. If you do not live in Richmond, VA. It thought me about a work environment I never want to be in again.

Cons

If you truly value quality over quantity, this place is not for you. It is SO metric driven that it becomes toxic. It does not matter how hard you work, or how good your work is, if your numbers do not match up with that month's unrealistic metrics your name will be paraded on the bottom of lists ( office e-mails and huge TV monitors around the office) for everyone to see. You will feel torn between providing good customer service vs. harassing clients, focusing on amount of dials and calls vs. adding properties onto the system, e-mails vs. random projects, and all while being micromanaged. ALL calls are recorded or dropped into, even if they are not allowed to record in your market or jurisdiction. It seems that every month there is a new metric to hit, and upper management does not care how you do it as long as you get it done. However, don't be caught cheating the system because you WILL get fired while the person who does cheat and doesn't get caught get's recognition. Did I mention that your calls are TIMED? If your call is less than one minute and thirty seconds, kiss that update with the client bye because it WILL NOT count as a call, it WILL NOT count towards your contact update frequency, and you WILL have to harass that person some other time within the month to get credit for that update. You will have to deal daily with things that do not make sense such as launching a new system that allows clients to add their on listings, but still having a listing added metric of at least 3 per day. The job is so demoralizing. It does not do justice to the title of "Researcher", it is just a over glorified call center, and this is the reason why turnover is so high. People only talk about how miserable they are and how bad they want to leave the company. Quality work is not recognized, and I know this first hand because a DIRECTOR told me this. She literally told me that it did not matter how fast I had moved up, or how good my work was, I did not deserve a higher merit increase because I did not have the knowledge (uhh..if that makes sense?). The culture at this place is despicable. If you do not share the predatory capitalistic mindset that the company values, you will be miserable. You need to earn the right to wear casual on Fridays, as if we were children being bribed. Rumors spread like wild fire. Teams are pinned against one another to see who obtains the higher numbers or hit the metrics. I felt my soul returned to my body after I quit.

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5.0
May 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Development, work life balance, competitive environment, career growth opportunities

Cons

A lot of priorities to juggle

1
1.0
May 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

401k, medical benefits snacks decent base salary

Cons

Working at CoStar Group was one of the most emotionally exhausting sales environments I’ve experienced. The culture on my team was extremely male-dominated, hyper-competitive, and very much “sink or swim.” Collaboration was talked about constantly by management, but in reality the environment rewarded internal competition, territorial behavior, favoritism, and politics over actual teamwork. As one of the few women on the sales team, I often felt isolated and unsupported. Instead of mentorship or coaching, the expectation was basically: “figure it out yourself.” New hires were thrown into difficult situations with inconsistent training and unrealistic expectations, while certain reps appeared to receive stronger books of business, better territories, or more support than others. It created resentment and a toxic atmosphere where coworkers often felt more like competitors waiting for you to fail than teammates. The turnover was incredibly high, which should have been a red flag. Management pushed aggressive quotas and nonstop pressure while failing to address morale, burnout, or fairness concerns. There was also an unhealthy obsession with leaderboard culture and internal politics that made the workplace feel stressful every single day. What disappointed me most was that I genuinely believed in the product and enjoyed helping clients. Many customers loved working with me, and I built strong relationships. But internally, the environment became mentally draining. The constant competitiveness, lack of support, and toxic culture eventually outweighed the positives of the role.

5
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