Earnings Labs

CoStar Group, Inc. (CSGP)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Sat, Oct 28, 2017

$36.03

-0.58%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2017 earnings call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Rich Simonelli. Please go ahead.

Rich Simonelli

Analyst

Thank you, operator. It's really great to be here today, and welcome to CoStar's Third Quarter 2017 Conference Call. We hope you all will enjoy it. Before I turn the call over to Andy Florance, our CEO and Founder; and Scott Wheeler, our CFO, I have some very interesting and important items for you to consider. Certain portions of our discussion today may contain forward-looking statements, which involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Important factors that can cause actual results to differ, include but are not limited to, those stated in our October 25, 2017, press release, on our third quarter results and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in quarterly reports on Form 10-Q under the heading Risk Factors. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to CoStar at the time of the call. We assume no obligation to update these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure to all of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call, including but not limited to, non-GAAP net income, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and forward-looking non-GAAP guidance are shown in details on our press release issued yesterday, which is also available on our website under costargroup.com. As a reminder, today's conference call is being broadcast live and in color on our website. So you can also find the CoStar information page there. Please refer to yesterday's press release on how to access the replay of this call once it's available. Remember, one question, make it a good one. I'll now turn the call over to Andy Florance. Andy?

Andy Florance

Analyst

Rich, I want to thank you for sharing that deep and personal information. I know that took a lot of courage.

Rich Simonelli

Analyst

Thank you.

Andy Florance

Analyst

Thank you for joining us today on our third quarter earnings call. The strong momentum we created in the first half of 2017 continued at an exceptionally strong pace into the third quarter of 2017. Year-over-year and sequential growth was excellent across the board. On a year-over-year basis, in the third quarter, our revenue growth accelerated to 16%, net income grew 48%, and EBITDA increased 26%. Sequentially, all three of our major revenue-by-services categories grew faster in the third quarter compared to the second quarter of this year. Our margins also rapidly expanded as adjusted EBITDA margin grew to 34%, up 1,100 basis points in the third quarter from 23% in the second quarter of 2017. Company-wide net bookings in the third quarter were up 31% year-over-year to $34 million, continuing an outstanding year in sales. Earlier this month, we completed the integration of LoopNet and CoStar, and our sales force began converting the LoopNet info users to CoStar users. I believe that based on results so far during the fourth quarter, the outlook for strong sales performance ahead is excellent. I'll have much more on this later. Overall, I believe we will see continued positive momentum during the rest of 2017, into 2018 and beyond. I'm truly amazed at the dedication and execution of the 3,600 CoStar professionals who have made us the number one platform in commercial real estate information and marketplaces. We are committed to constantly improving and building upon our prior successes to ensure that we continue to exceed client and investor expectations. In early October, we successfully completed an important secondary offering. Net proceeds in that share offering were $833 million. We restructured our credit facility, extending the term five years and increasing the size of the revolver to 750 million. And we pre-paid our…

Scott Wheeler

Analyst

Thank you, Andy. I know there's really a lot going on in the third quarter fairly on a positive result, nothing like taking on a major product integration with CoStar-LoopNet, signing an important new acquisition with ForRent, executing common stock offering, restructuring debt, and by the way, we also turned on the Oracle cloud ERP system on October 1, so nothing like a quiet quarter here at CoStar. Yeah, great results. Revenue in the third quarter, as Andy mentioned, is up 16% over prior year. And we see the acceleration in all our major revenue growth rates on our primary revenue streams versus the prior quarter. Our organic growth rate in the third quarter was 14%, and that normalizes out the acquisition of WestsideRentals, The Screening Pros and LandWatch, all of which we closed earlier this year, as well as the effects of THOMAS DAILY, which we closed in the second quarter 2016. Let's look at the revenue performances by our services. CoStar Suite revenue growth improved to 14% in the third quarter 2017 versus third quarter 2016. And this is after reporting strong 13% growth rates in the first half of 2017. We certainly expect CoStar Suite growth rates to continue at 13% to 14% for the rest of 2017. We expect to see continued strong performance going forward as we hit full stride in the cross-sell of CoStar services to LoopNet information services that Andy talked about. The revenue growth rates in information services remained negative in the third quarter, as expected, as we continue to wind down the LoopNet information products. The revenue decline from the LoopNet information products in the third quarter was moderated by the double-digit growth in our portfolio of strategies and the Real Estate Manager business. We expect the Information Services revenue decline…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question would come from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens, one moment.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Thanks for all the details and particularly the LoopNet up-sell. A lot of folks have been, I know, very focused on that. My question is on bookings growth. I know this is sometimes a frustrating question to get asked. But 31% was a deceleration from, I think, the 39% growth last year or last quarter. And I wondered, just give us thoughts on that, was there some distraction of the sales force as they get trained up for Loop? I think you guys said in last call that maybe half of the 700 and some odd would be focused on this. Was there a tough comp? Just any thoughts on that would be helpful because folks have asked us about that. Thank you.

Scott Wheeler

Analyst

Yes, sure, Brett. Q2 obviously was a pretty phenomenal quarter, record net sales numbers. And we had this record sales number in CoStar Suite, which was obviously a very positive. We had some pretty large national deals that were in there, which helped us in that quarter. So when you look at Q3 across all of our product groups, they performed very strongly and I think that the two factors I'd call out was, one, we didn't have any big, large national deal in the fourth or in the third quarter. And also we lost a number of selling days around a couple of our regions as we dealt with - clients impacted by the Houston hurricane, the Florida hurricanes, and we backed off on, obviously, sales. And we also did some crediting for distressed clients there. It's not a huge impact, but it does sort of dampen the output. And then there was some getting ready for the CoStar LoopNet integration that occurred in the last month in the quarter. So I think all those things combined gave us a little softer than Q2. But still we're very happy with where that is, and we're averaging about 35 million a quarter this year in net new, which is a nice place to be.

Andy Florance

Analyst

So, just to add to that. I would just say that the focus in the sales force was 100% on the upcoming Loop integration. So that was the topic of the quarter. And so as you approach that integration period, there's a lot of energy, a lot of preparation going into that integration, which will be the highlight of the next two years. That will be the drumbeat that we're following for the next two years. And so in the lull right before you set off on that big effort, people weren't launching new major initiatives somewhere else. So it just was more of a timing issue where you're building up for what we've been describing in the last two weeks, which is a really strong result. The other thing on the apartment side is that we had intentionally slowed down our efforts to take business from ForRent, which we have an agreement to acquire. So that also had a little bit of an impact. So big picture, good things happening, more timing issues with exactly what you're trying to do, what emphasis you're putting on what's allowable.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Pete Christiansen with Citi.

Pete Christiansen

Analyst · Citi.

A lot of good information, a lot to chew on this quarter. Just some quick ones. Andy, I know it's early but any thoughts on the pace of the campaign given the first couple of weeks here? Is this something you think you may want to accelerate? Or it's status quo for now? And my second question was to Scott. I know you mentioned the offset bookings is going to most - a net positive on the conversion. But I guess, how do we think about that on a recurring revenue basis? Would it be roughly the same impact? I know you're not turning off everybody at once.

Andy Florance

Analyst · Citi.

So, in terms of accelerating it, right now I would say we are measuring it. And the pace of the lead flow right now is massive. So we are just trying to keep up with the pace of the lead flow that's coming in. And so we will continue to assess that and figure out how we try to scale to take advantage of that. I think the e-commerce modules coming up later in the not-too-distant future will help us process more of those leads electronically, immediately. But I think that if you just - if you look at the press release and my statement today - the press release from yesterday and the statement today, the pace of 100 contracts a day, that's sort of unprecedented for us. And we will look for ways to accelerate probably relying on e-commerce to help there a little bit. I'll let Scott answer the second question.

Scott Wheeler

Analyst · Citi.

Yes. The perspective on bookings and what we see going forward, as you can imagine, there's a good bit of noise that gets introduced in October that we're sifting through now. The very positive noise, obviously, from the pipeline and then the new sales and the uplift that we'll see in CoStar Suite. And then there's the noise around the info services declining both from the shift of CoStar and also that we no longer sell those to our e-com platform. So that's - it's interplay between those two that we are seeing as a net positive right now in the fourth quarter. There's also other minor, let's say, near-term disruptions that you'll see as you make a conversion of this scale in the LoopNet marketing business, has to do with users having new interfaces, new places to go, figuring out their listings between the two sites. And so you see a little disruption in the first couple of weeks, but we've recovered from those and we'll see those recurring like we have in the past. So all in all, even though we don't forecast our bookings or communicate bookings forecast, we'll see a little more range of variability in the quarter, but I wouldn't expect to see us much different than where we landed in the third quarter as we go in towards the end of the year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of David Ridley-Lane with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

David Ridley-Lane

Analyst

Now that the LoopNet is a pure-paid marketplace, do you have any early indications of behavior? I think there were about 100,000 free listers. Are you starting to see them soften up to, at least, to the basic ad package? And maybe to set the backdrop so that we're all on the same page, can you give us the number of paid advertisements on the site and the average revenue per listing? Thanks.

Andy Florance

Analyst

Sure. So yes, we've been watching that, I think there's 128,000 free listings or something at the point of conversion. And we've been very pleased with the response we've received from those folks. So they get - they basically understand that there are paying advertisers and that their free ads compete with the paying advertisers' exposure. And so not a big surprise to them that it's becoming a pure-paid marketing marketplace. Again, in the first week or so, I believe we've had over - first two weeks, we've had a 100-some-convert. And my sense just anecdotally this early is that we'll see a lot of those folks move in to basic packages. And we extend some pretty good discount plans and easy entry points for them. So I would expect that we would do very well in that audience. We are intentionally prioritizing our sales resources against the information side initially, that's the one that goes by very rapidly, and we want to make sure we're on top of that as a first priority, and we've taken some of the folks who were selling the LoopNet product - develop some LoopNet product to help process some of the more remote - geographically remote candidates for CoStar up-sell. So the results are good. And I have to say that I was watching what kind of reaction we got from those free listers and I am very happy with the way they responded. So just again, timing for six months or so, it's 100% about how are we making sure we're capturing this information opportunity and that will continue for two years or so, but tuning it for six months or so. And then the LoopNet sales effort happening now, but really hitting its crescendo in '18. So they're waves because they have to be. In terms of number of paid listings - it's 300. The 300,000 paid listings. And then in terms of price per listing, sub-$20.

Scott Wheeler

Analyst

Yes, it's not very high.

Andy Florance

Analyst

Yes, it's not high. And that was - that's an important issue because, remember, prior to our acquiring LoopNet, they pretty much sold one-size-fits-all. They just sold a standard ad and they sold it to commercial real estate brokers. Commercial real estate brokers, the person paying for the ad only gets about 1.5% of the deal. The owner's getting 95% of the deal. Sub-$20 is really low. And if you look around the world and you look at SeeLodge, Scout24, Rightmove, REA Group, Zillow, any of these folks or Apartments.com, our own property Apartments.com, we're getting $7,000 per advertiser and some folks are getting up to $30,000 per advertiser. We're doing couple of hundred bucks for advertisers. I think as we offer more tiered listings and enhanced listing opportunities as we do with the Apartments.com and as we target the owner opportunity, I believe that those numbers will soar and grow really dramatically. So that's our primary focus. And whatever anxieties I had around how the free folks reacted, those are gone.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo.

Bill Warmington

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

So first of all, congratulations to Andre Benjamin, nice to see you hiring a recovering sell sider.

Andy Florance

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

We have him in therapy right now.

Bill Warmington

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

So, I wanted to run through some of the math that you gave earlier. So if you talk about $2.7 million in bookings that we've seen so far, on 622 new deals, that would imply about $360 per month in revenue lift that you're seeing. But question is, you're really looking at two different opportunities here, right? You've got the LoopNet Premium Searcher converting to the CoStar Suite, and it's like 474 of them. And then you've got the free lister to Premium Lister conversion. And I just wanted to try to parse the contribution to that $2.7 million a little better just so that when we're doing the modeling of what the opportunity could be, at least, using figures that make sense.

Andy Florance

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes. Is it 80% is information right now of the revenue?

Scott Wheeler

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes.

Andy Florance

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

80% of that 2.7 is info. And again, we have - as John Paul Jones said, we have not yet begun to fight. So we have not yet entered the field on the advertising side. So the free-to-client movement on the advertising side will be significant. But I really think the much, much more significant opportunity will be as we remove more and more of the clutter on the LoopNet site associated with low-end broker products and we focus the site more to higher end product like beautiful office towers and high-end shopping centers and create a more high-end advertising opportunities with using the 3D imagery we’ve used so successfully in the Apartments.com and the videos and whatnot. I think that the bigger story is going to be when owner starts - when we start selling higher volumes of $1,000 a month, $2,000 a month ad packages with a lot of exposure. So we're doing all sorts of things to grow the upper end and the free to pay are good, that could be a lot of money. But the huge money is going to be meeting the needs of the people who have $300 million speculative office building developments in a 5% marketing budget that’s’ going be our primary focus. So we have a number of different initiatives underway there. So you may have seen the redesign, probably not. We've redesigned the home page and we put up a wealth of news there. We've begun to build a much larger news team to engage people more emotionally in the site, create more ad opportunities. And so you'll start to see the full pace of that in '18. You'll start to see some interesting news around that. So I'm very excited about that, getting good results on the free-to-pay now. But getting phenomenal results on our primary focus, which is the information side. And I know, like, for instance, we just added some key players to our product team on the LoopNet side around designing towards the higher end opportunity, so...

Scott Wheeler

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

The other encouraging piece of news when you look at the contracts we're closing are folks that are now buying CoStar are buying the information side. Half of those contracts were paying us something before, half of those contracts were paying us nothing before on information. So that's very positive news for us to see that's kind of a split.

Andy Florance

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

The other positive thing is that if I roll back four years ago, the market - there was confusion in the market. They would sort of say, "Well, gosh, I'm either buying LoopNet or I'm buying CoStar." And they really hadn't got their heads around the value prop - the relative value propositions. Now we're signing up a lot of business, I imagine a lot of those contracts on the advertising side are situations where the person - I mentioned some of them, where the person's doing both CoStar and LoopNet contracts aggressively buying significant marketing plans on LoopNet and significant information plans on CoStar. So that's the best news is that these aren't either ors, these go together and they complement each other beautifully. They're solving two huge problems for our clients, one is their information need and the other is how do you reach a buyer universe of millions of end-users. So hopefully that gives you some color. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Jeffrey with SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Andrew Jeffrey

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Andy, the initial result of a cross-seller are pretty impressive as you recited chapter and verse. How do you feel about the productivity and the capacity of the sales organization? I know at times of accelerating growth in the past, CoStar's gone out and made meaningful sales force investments and I think you've invested in front of this cross-sell cycle. But I just want to check in and see where you're headed at as far as, perhaps, having to scale up that sales force in line with the nice success you're having on the cross-sell side?

Andy Florance

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes, so you're correct. And thank you for pointing that out, Andrew. We did invest ahead of this. So we added 88 customer relationship managers to support the effort and specifically to do this. We ramped that team up during the course of the year and the prior four quarters and got them to roughly full strength in advance of this integration effort. We have grown the sales force a bit there. We have begun to grow on the inside sales team around the efforts. So we do invest in advance. One of the ways I'm looking at it, which is a little different than normal is how we - when a significant percentage of your sales force has made quota by mid-month, which is highly unusual, you have to actually begin to manage the sales force a little bit more around making sure that nothing - none of the opportunities are slipping by because they're doing really well. Like, we need to sort of extend our expectations on productivity for the sales force because they can, I think, the sky's the limit on what that they can do. I do not believe right now that adding more bodies is necessary. And I do think that e-commerce can do a lot with the lower-end opportunity. So both LoopNet and CoStar have been observing and working with and interacting with tens of thousands of these brokers for years. We know who they are, we know how many properties they have, we know how many people are in their firm, generally speaking. And when they go into LoopNet and they see this locked pin interface, and they can clearly see the dramatic information advantage CoStar would offer them. And they're the only one seeing, the end-users don't see that mode. They immediately want to learn more about upgrading to CoStar, and in the first two weeks, we had 2,500-plus - more than 2,500 people submit leads to us who were on that locked-pin system. And we want to give them the ability to just electronically buy immediately, just use their existing contract authority with us or a credit card to immediately buy, which would solve some of the constraints of the sales force.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] with B. Riley.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

So a quick follow-up on the multi-family opportunity you guys have. I think you mentioned in the call a significant TAM of apartment sizes of 5 units and above, but you've also talked about in the past how the TAM of apartment side is about 5 units and below are significantly larger. Could you kind of quantify what you see is the larger tail opportunities as you guys moved and target those smaller 5 units or below apartment complexes?

Andy Florance

Analyst

So traditionally, the industry, the apartment marketing industry, the folks producing publications for supermarket checkout counters and the like around the apartment industry, they targeted properties 120, 150 units and above. And when we had bought Apartments.com, we began focusing on - and that's probably only - that world is probably only about a quarter of the apartment units in the United States, a huge swathe of them are 5 units to 120 units, 150 units. So we have had huge success in the last two years selling to people who have 50 units or 30 units or 80 units. And it probably makes sense people that owned 80 unit apartment buildings are absolutely good prospects for advertising, or even 10 units, right? And so we can see - we can quantify given the rates we're currently achieving in the high-end and the middle that, that's in excess of a $2 billion TAM. And as you get to smaller unit size - smaller property sizes, people pay dramatically more in marketing because they don't have in-house - they want to invest more in marketing because they usually don't have in-house marketing and leasing. And then the biggest one is the sub-5 units. So that's basically little walk-up properties, condos, townhouses, single-family homes, that's about 22 million-plus units. And that's probably the single largest TAM. So we're focusing on harvesting the opportunity at the middle and upper side where we have products that meet that audience's demand. But we now have about 300,000 of those mom-and-pops participating in marketing on our site and the growth there is huge. And right now they're marketing for free, but the numbers are staggering. It was basically zero, three years ago, now it's 300,000 people actively marketing there. So first, we're going to build participation and we're going to build - we're going to try to engage that community and create real powerful marketing channels for them. And then we'll offer them products that they can enhance their exposure. And so we can go after that $8 billion TAM at the lower-end, at the sub-5 unit area. I hope that answered the question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, absolutely. And I guess as a follow-up to that, you guys obviously have different pricing tiers. You mentioned the smaller-end of the market pays a lot more, so would you say that's a diamond-level pricing? And how does the TAM increase as you essentially make the assumption that a lot of those people signing up, essentially, will start with standard, then move on to, like, a diamond-level package or a high-level package over time?

Andy Florance

Analyst

So the - we actually - we measure it as the spend per unit. So the numbers won't be precise. But at the upper end, if someone's got a 200 unit or 300 unit community they might be spending $30 a year per unit with us. When you move down to someone who is - got a 20-unit community, they might be spending $300 a unit or $200 a unit per year. So it actually - they more pay more per unit. And so they may be paying the same amount or slightly less per property, but they're paying more per unit to market with us. And we do give them slightly lower price points to participate at the Basic, Silver, Gold level. But then the prices begin to look the same for small and big communities when you move into the diamond, the very highest exposure levels. And then for the sub-5 unit communities, we are not currently offering products targeted to them. Right now, we're looking to grow participation not to monetize it, so. But there are a number of different things that we can do to monetize that in the years to come, but right now we're focused on just getting them to use Apartments.com as their preferred marketing source.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And kind of final follow-up question. I imagine you've been seeing like an uplift of people on Apartments.com moving to the diamond level to get that incremental exposure, just given the number of new units being developed. How much of a tailwind would you kind of estimate that would be over the next few quarters have you seen more people probably uplift to a higher level subscription given the incremental vacancies and the new developments happening across the country?

Andy Florance

Analyst

Well, I do think that these new - when you build - I think it's like 75% of all of new construction is targeted towards the top 10% of the market. So 75% of construction is targeted towards the top 10% of income renters. So those folks tend to be diamond advertisers right off the bat when they're selling the $3,000 a month unit, they're going to diamond. So that is a great tailwind for us. But the bigger tailwind would be if we get any overall growth in vacancy and apartments, that's across the whole spectrum or the whole market and that tends to drive dramatically more advertising. And I think Scott gave us some numbers, there were 75% of the revenue growth there is coming from new customers and only 25% is from coming from the folks scaling up the ladder. As the marketplace is still relatively young given that we have 10% penetration into that - into the more traditional segment of the market, and you would expect that the shift to revenue growth coming from peer - to people going up the tiers would be something you'd expect to see more ratio there in years three through ten or something from now. Right now it's about bringing new people onboard. And we're very happy with the number of folks coming on board, new advertisers. And we're getting good renewal rates with those folks, too. So it's strong.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Sterling Auty with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Jackson Ader

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

This is Jackson Ader on for Sterling this morning, guys. One question from our side. How do you think about - after we get past this initial blitz of converting LoopNet over to CoStar, how are you thinking about pricing power or potentially pricing pressure moving forward after we get through the next maybe three or four quarters?

Andy Florance

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes, so I would say that the blitz is a - probably a ten-quarter activity. So the first phase where we did the 28,000 up-sells that occurred over three years. And I think this is a similar time period. I think this is multiple years of just bringing these folks into the CoStar information platform. The prices are actually pretty constant. And we have created - the interesting thing is, we want to make sure that there are affordable options for everybody. So we actually created some of our lowest-cost solutions to date. We came up with an enhanced CoStar property, which is a - has less content than our CoStar Suite product, it comes in at nearly half the price. So we offered something at nearly half the price. And 90% of the customers went to the high-end product. And I think that just points out the fact that they - I think this points out - we tried to do the right thing, you're like, no one wants the low-end plan. And the - it just points out that these guys make good money in the business. They spend all day long in these information products. They're able to get huge returns on their investment in these information tools. And what we're charging them is actually de minimis to what they actually make on the product. It's an investment on their part, for sure, but it's-relative to what they make on it. It's a good deal. And that is reflected in our super high renewal rates. So right now, we're focused on participation, we're not focused on trying to raise prices. We're 100% focused on participation. And we haven't contemplated anything but that.

Jackson Ader

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

And I guess if I can just quickly follow-up. I mean, is there any incentive - if I'm a customer who converts in October of 2017, is there any benefit that I get to converting now instead of maybe October of 2018?

Andy Florance

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Excellent question. I believe we're offering, if you are a LoopNet customer, I believe, we're offering three months free, your first three months are free when you commit to a new contract. So I think it ends up being a 15-month contract with three months being free, the revenue is just straight-lined across, and that's just to give them a reason to move in 2017. But I think that you'll be able - when that is past, I think, we'll be able to continue at the same pace after that's done, just that people are smart to jump in early will get a little bit of a gift from us, a welcome gift because we appreciate their business.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Lamers with William Blair.

Josh Lamers

Analyst · William Blair.

You've touched [Technical Difficulty] into the multi-family business and better understand the contribution to growth in the quarter from asset type, call it, 2 to 50, 50 to 100 and 100-unit-plus buildings. And then, additionally, what kind of incremental sales force headcount growth might we expect in order to address the growing pipeline in that segment?

Andy Florance

Analyst · William Blair.

Okay. I think we lost - something happened and we lost the first 10 seconds of the question. Could you repeat that?

Josh Lamers

Analyst · William Blair.

Sure thing. Yes, I just - you've touched on it a bit, but I'd like to better understand the contribution to growth in the multi-family business from an asset-type perspective. So call it 2 to 50 units, 50 to 100, 120-plus, if you will. And then what kind of head count growth can we expect in order to meet the growing pipeline?

Andy Florance

Analyst · William Blair.

So the - if I just generally look back at when we acquired Apartments.com, 90-some-percent of the revenue - 95% of revenue was coming from 120-units plus. Now 15% of the revenue is coming from below 100 units. So it's going from being a couple points to 15 percentage points. The growth rate in that - the growth rates in the 20 to 49 unit communities advertising has been 500% over the last three years. Growth rate in 50 to 99 communities has been 300%. Growth in 100 to 200 units is 150%. And the growth in 200-plus is 70%. So the explosive growth is at the lower end. And our first priority is to make sure our sales people are touching basically our existing clients each quarter and then they visit prospects. We do not have enough sales people to visit all of the prospects we now know that - now learned and discovered that we have in this sub-100 world. But fortunately, with the pending acquisition of ForRent, that would bring us a new shot in the arm with a growth in our sales force well over 100 people, which should give us exactly what we need to visit every one of those good prospects every quarter as we try to build out that opportunity. So we sort of have it baked in to the acquisition of ForRent to get enough salespeople to visit the prospects.

Operator

Operator

And our final question comes from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens.

Brett Huff

Analyst

I guess, I got back in the queue. So I didn't mean to do that, but I can certainly ask another question. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys are thinking about other new products you're going to be focusing on? I know you're going to be jamming on the LoopNet cross-sale, but I know, Andy, you've always got kind of the next thing on the horizon. Any thoughts on that at this point? Or is it just sort of too early given your focus on LoopNet right now?

Andy Florance

Analyst

Sure. So we - LoopNet marketing over the next three years will look very different than LoopNet marketing looks today. So if you go back to ancient history when CoStar used to sell print office directories around the world, around this region, we actually, in the late 80s, came out with online or computer-based information products and couldn't sell them because nobody had a computer so we had to go produce magazines instead. And we - it's in our DNA. We understand how developers market higher end commercial properties, and we used to sell advertisements of $15,000 a month, $10,000 a month, $5,000 a month for these high-end properties, put them prominently in front of the biggest players in the market consistently. Compare that $5,000, $10,000 a month to the $20-some-bucks LoopNet was getting per advertiser, very different. So the biggest design change you'll see right off the bat over the next 18 months around LoopNet are creating the presentations those high-end advertisers want. What does One Bryant Tower in New York want when - Bryant Tower New York want when they are - when they've got 100,000 square feet of speculative space they need to market to the community. And we believe we can build those products in LoopNet. So that will be a big development push. The other development push that's still early stages, but you're right, I spent two days in Atlanta doing focus groups on new products this week, because we had nothing else going on. And the - and one of the things we're very excited about is doing more work around screening, prescreening renters who are setting leads in the communities and potentially providing tools to accelerate and streamline the screening process and application process with these millions of renters coming off of Apartments.com. The renters don't like the way the system currently works, it's very inefficient, they can't tell what they qualify for, they can't tell what's really available and then the owners don't like the system where they get super high bad lead ratios. And we think we can solve those problems with some innovative tools. And we think those tools will lead us into monetizing the lowest side of the market, that sub-5 unit area. So that is one of our highest priorities. We've added some staff around that, and we continue to add some staff around that and that - we've done some very small acquisitions around that area, too. So that - not going into too much detail, I think that's where we're focusing.

Operator

Operator

And there are no further questions in queue. Please go ahead.

Andy Florance

Analyst

Thank you everyone for joining us. I appreciate your patience as we went through a pretty long call today and I blame Rich for that, I cut out at least ten pages that Rich wrote for me. But we look forward - we had - we were glad that we were able to report a fantastic early indication on the LoopNet-CoStar integration. It's still very early and look forward to being able to come back at the year-end call and give you some more substance, what happened over the full three-month period. So thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference Service. You may now disconnect.