Andy Florance

Founder, Director, President and CEO
CoStar Group

Andy Florance is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoStar Group. Since the company’s founding in 1986, he has led the digitization of the world's real estate, empowering people to discover properties, insights, and connections that improve their businesses and lives.

From founding the company in his dorm room to successful IPO in July 1998, Andy has led CoStar Group’s expansion to its market-leading position today as a publicly traded enterprise included in the S&P 500 Index (NASDAQ: CSGP), the NASDAQ 100 and its prominent spot as a leading global provider of commercial and residential real estate information, analytics, and online marketplaces. CoStar Group serves more than one million clients in total, and its websites have received more than one billion visitors in the past twelve months alone.

Andy's work has gained recognition across the industry, earning placements on Forbes’ Fast Tech 25, Forbes’ 100 Most Innovative Growth Companies in the World, and Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies. In the past year, Andy was named Globee CEO of the Year, Globee Visionary Leader of the Year, one of the 30 Most Powerful People in Commercial Real Estate Proptech by Commercial Observer, an Inman Power Player and was in the top Ten on the SP 200 Real Estate’s Most Powerful and Influential List.

In 2023, Andy led CoStar’s historic partnership with VCU to support the arts and innovation. Thanks to an $18 million commitment, the planned CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation is expected to be a 213,000-square-foot multidisciplinary complex on a 1-acre site at the prominent intersection of Richmond’s Broad and Belvidere streets.

The project will consolidate VCU’s nationally recognized School of the Arts and innovation programs under one roof. The center is expected to open in early 2027.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., CoStar Group employs a staff of more than 5,500 worldwide and maintains offices around the world to manage a wide range of industry-leading brands, including CoStar, the global leader in real estate information, analytics and data-driven news, Apartments.com, the most trafficked multifamily marketplace; LoopNet, the most trafficked CRE marketplace; Homes.com, the fastest growing residential marketplace; STR, the leading source of global hospitality insights and analysis; Ten-X, the leading platform for CRE online auctions; BizBuySell, the largest business-for-sale marketplace; and Land.com, the largest rural real estate marketplace in the country.

Andy Florance has co-authored a number of award-winning academic articles on commercial real estate economics. He currently serves on the Board of Visitors for Virginia Commonwealth University, the Cathedral Chapter of the Washington National Cathedral, and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that works to aid the development of diverse leaders.

Mr. Florance is a graduate of Princeton University with a B.A. in Economics and received an honorary doctorate from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019.