Andy Florance founded CoStar Group, Inc. from his dorm room as an undergraduate at Princeton University in 1987 fundamentally changing the way commercial real estate professionals access, use and share information. Mr. Florance has led CoStar Group’s growth from startup to one of the top largest 500 public companies, operating some of the most active internet marketplaces for buying and selling commercial real estate, apartments, businesses and land. In 2019, CoStar Group joined the NASDAQ 100, an index of the 100 largest companies outside of finance listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Mr. Florance’ s enduring commitment to innovation was recognized with Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and by Forbes magazine, which named CoStar among the 100 Most Innovative Growth Companies in the world. As CEO of CoStar Group, Mr. Florance leads an exceptional team of over 4,000 employees in North America, Europe and Asia.

Mr. Florance has directed CoStar Group’s expansion from start-up, to its successful IPO in July 1998, and to its market-leading position today as a publicly traded enterprise (Nasdaq: CSGP) and the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. CoStar’s major holdings include: CoStar, the largest provider of commercial real estate research, analytics and data – offering in-depth information on building attributes, historical lease and sale transactions, tenants, true owners and professionally captured images that are used by ninety-five percent of the top 1,000 brokerages for client-ready reports, market analysis, news and information; LoopNet, including Showcase, CityFeet and ShopProperty, the most heavily trafficked online commercial real estate marketplace with more than 12.6 million monthly visits, 22 times more unique visitors than all competition combined; The Apartments.com Network, the premier rental home resource for renters, property managers and owners, including Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder, ApartmentHomeLiving, Apartamentos.com, ForRent.com, ForRentUniversity.com, After55.com, CorporateHousing.com, Westside Rentals and Off Campus Partners; BizBuySell, the Internet’s largest and most heavily trafficked business-for-sale marketplace; Lands of America, the largest rural real estate marketplace in the country and; STR, the leading provider of premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for global hospitality sectors.

Mr. Florance has co-authored a number of academic articles on commercial real estate economics and received Best Manuscript Prize Awards and the Scholar Practitioner Prize from the American Real Estate Society. He is active in education having served on six school boards over 28 years. He served on the board of several public company boards and six non-profit boards. Mr. Florance is currently the Chair of the Board of the Cathedral Chapter overseeing the Washington National Cathedral and sits on the board of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, the American Real Estate Society and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that develops 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.

Andy enjoys his spare time on a farm in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife Heather and two sons, Christopher and Matthew.