As a member of the Valuation & Advisory team, I carry out commercial property valuation work throughout the UK, predominantly for loan security purposes.

I was once on a very tight deadline valuing a property many miles from my work place where all the local agents were either on holiday or not available.

The lack of data was making it very difficult for me to complete my valuation within the Bank's strict time constraints.

Having phoned local agents in vain for first hand information, I turned to FOCUS: within a few searches I had up to date, accurate and thorough comparable evidence which proved a godsend as I was fast running out of ideas.

I swiftly assembled a professional looking comparables schedule, which the bank commented favourably on, in isolation.

FOCUS is a simple, must-have tool for commercial property valuation surveyors.

We get involved in a range of activities, from agency to property management and valuations.

In the current marketplace we are expected to provide increasingly fast turnaround on valuations, especially to banks.

As you can imagine we need quick access to deals done, new properties coming onto the market and accurate comparable evidence.

CoStar provides that, and the information is up to date and second to none in this industry. We rely on the comparable evidence especially if dealing with property out of our area. The alerts keep us fully informed of new properties coming to the market and deals done, which again is good for future information as to rent reviews etc.

The results can be quickly assembled into professional looking comparables schedules. The level of accuracy of the information is great and I really feel now I could not do without the service.

I am responsible for marketing about 20 properties for a number of national clients: FOCUS is my first port of call because the database is comprehensive and any agent/occupier worth knowing has access to it.

Furthermore, it allows you to target your marketing and ensure details get to the right person, quickly. It also enables you to reach occupiers you wouldn't normally think were suitable for the property.

I can use the 'retail requirements' function proactively if I see a new opportunity or if I am marketing a new property and I can also search for 'deals' when looking for comparable rental evidence, saving a lot of time trying to find the right person to get hold of.

The fact that I am saving a vast amount of time with FOCUS means I can spend more time trying to do my job and make money for the business.

As a surveyor in the RBS Real Estate Finance team, accurate data is vital for my role and CoStar FOCUS is very useful in that respect. Although I have many Agency and Valuation contacts, compiling information from different sources is time consuming.

CoStar is an excellent tool for collating specific real estate information. For example, with only the address of the subject property we can quickly access a Building Report which details availability, recent transactions, occupier, ownership and rating information of the property.

We can also extract specific data on all markets across the UK and analyse the supply and demand from a granular level using the radius and boundary search for availability and deals information.

CoStar also saves us time as data can easily be transferred into Word or Excel reports. Using CoStar data gives my team solid background information on commercial buildings and the market of the subject building.

We own a number of small to mid-size industrial units. Recently, the market got more competitive due to occupiers looking to source the best value and a large number of properties becoming vacant, so we needed to get proactive and target "new to market occupiers".

Using FOCUS we created an up-to-date and professional looking schedule which included photos and details of all the space we were marketing. Using the Occupiers tool, we then produced lists of all the businesses who occupied space located close to these available properties.

Being able to search for businesses by location, size, type of property and even number of staff made the list very relevant: once compiled and complete with contact name, it was then downloaded into Excel and all we had to do was to print off the labels and send out!

By return we received an enquiry for a 775sq ft workshop on a three year lease. The client had been in discussion with another landlord but was finding it difficult to reach an agreement so we quickly arranged a viewing and agreed terms almost immediately. All this within one month of subscribing!