Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the CoStar Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2020 Group Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Mr. Bill Warmington. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Angela. Good evening and thank you all for joining us to discuss the 4th quarter year end 2020 results of the CoStar Group. Before I turn the call over to Andy Florance, CoStar's CEO and Founder And Scott Wheeler, our CFO, I would like to review our Safe Harbor statement. Certain portions of the Discussion today may contain forward looking statements, including the company's outlook and expectations for the Q1 and full year 2021. Forward looking statements involve many risks, uncertainties, assumptions, estimates and other factors that can 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 CoStar's press release issued earlier today and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10 Q under the heading Risk Factors. All forward looking statements are based on information available to CoStar on the date of this call. CoStar assumes no obligation to update these statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures Of the non GAAP financial measures discussed on this call, including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, non GAAP net income and forward looking non GAAP guidance are shown in detail in our press release issued today along with definitions for those terms. The press release is available on our website located at costargroup.
Please refer to today's press release on how to access the replay of this call. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to our Founder and CEO, Andy Florins.
Thank you. Well done, Bill. You really did that preamble beautifully. And I have to say I'm reflecting that In your career, you've probably listened to easily 10,000 earning calls and now you're actually reading Preamble. So hang in there, this is a big day for you.
Okay. Well, good evening, everyone else, and thank you for joining us for CoStar Group's 4th quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. And I just assume all of you are as excited as I am to be here tonight. So welcome. Total revenues for the full year 2020 were $1,660,000,000 which is a 19% year over year growth rate and $9,000,000 ahead of the top end of our guidance range given in late October.
Quarterly sales bookings were a solid $49,000,000 with second half bookings Rebounding 24% versus the first half of twenty twenty. Our profit performance was equally strong, Delivering full year 2020 adjusted EBITDA of $553,000,000 an increase of 9% year over year and $23,000,000 above the high end of our guidance given in October. What I believe is even more impressive, despite the severe The disruption of our customers and our teams caused by the pandemic in March is that our financial results are either in line with or exceed the initial full year guidance $1,000,000,000 bond offering with an investment credit rating investment grade credit rating. Our marketplace businesses, particularly Apartments dot FedEx positions us with nearly perfectly countercyclical business and an opportunity to leverage digital marketplaces into greater commercial real estate liquidity. Importus extends our reach with content on hundreds of thousands of properties around the world.
With the addition HomeSnap in December, we expanded our addressable market beyond commercial real estate into residential. Overall, 2020 was clearly a transformative year And as we look ahead to 2021, our strong balance sheet and acquisition track record position us to successfully Before we get further into our results, I want to briefly address where we stand with our recently announced offer to acquire CoreLogic. 1 week ago today, we delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of CoreLogic setting forth the terms of a superior proposal to acquire CoreLogic. Under the terms of the proposal, CoreLogic shareholders would receive 0.1019 shares of CoStar Group common stock dollars per share based on CoStar Group's closing share price on February 12, 2021. As I describe The CoStar proposal implies pro form a diluted ownership of approximately 16.2% in the combined entity for CoStar Group's offer is clearly superior to offer to the CoreLogic shareholders in Our all stock merger with CoreLogic improves the value of their pending transaction with StonePoint by 20% based on the date of the offer.
More importantly, we believe that with 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of Synergies, which I will discuss in a bit more detail, the implied ownership of our proposal provides substantial value upside, which we believe would deliver value in excess of $105 per share to CoreLogic well through the decades, driven by solid fundamentals such as our compound annual revenue growth of 21% over 5 years. With consistent growth and a huge addressable market, CoStar Group share prices appreciated 4.96% over the Since our IPO, CoStar stock has consistently proven equally as valuable as cash. In addition to our all stock offer, we plan to invest approximately $2,000,000,000 to pay down CoreLogic's existing debt and another $500,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 will help support double digit revenue growth for the combined company for many years to come. This combination would Tripled CoStar Group's total addressable market by combining the global leader in digitizing commercial property with a global leader in digitizing residential real estate. We estimate that globally, commercial properties have an aggregate value of $66,000,000,000,000 and residential properties have an aggregate value of $114,000,000,000,000 Combined, these companies will be very well positioned for growth, meeting the information analysis and marketing needs We believe that we can significantly accelerate CoreLogic's organic growth rate.
CoStar Group has a well established track record of acquiring slow growth companies constrained with single digit organic growth rates and have managed them to Fast growth companies with double digit organic growth rates. In the 3 years prior to CoStar Group acquiring LoopNet, Revenues on average were negative 2.3 percent a year. In the past 2 years, LoopNet has grown almost 20% a year And already we have grown LoopNet's revenue more than fourfold since acquisition. In the 3 years prior to acquiring Apartments dot .com, revenue grew at 7.7 percent a year on average. In the past 3 years, apartments.com has grown almost 30% a year on average.
Already, we have grown Apartments dotcom's revenue by more than 6.5x. We believe that with new products, more direct selling, cross selling, selling to new audiences and segments and integrated product offerings, there's a Similar opportunities significantly increased CoreLogic's organic growth rate. CoStar Group is the perfect strategic partner for Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Property owners, developers, investors, appraisers and firms selling solutions to the people and companies that use real estate. A very large percentage of these organizations have an interest in both residential and commercial, but today have to purchase different solutions from CoStar Group and CoreLogic to meet their complete real estate needs. Using disparate point solutions is inconvenient and reduces the value of the respective offerings. This is a strategic acquisition that will provide our combined clients with integrated solutions across all The combined company expects to eliminate the artificial difference between commercial and residential real estate digital solutions.
We believe that these integrated solutions will create Massive cross selling opportunities, significantly increasing product uptake, sales and 100 of 1,000,000 in revenue synergies. CoreLogic has approximately 150 professionals in its sales organization and CoStar Group has 1660, I'm sorry. There's 10 60 in CoStar Group, 150 in CoreLogic. In combination, when you put these companies together, we have the resources necessary to realize the potential cross selling opportunity. We believe that many of the solutions CoStar Group so successfully offers today, which are only delivered to commercial real estate can be extended into residential real estate.
Marketplaces like apartments.com and LoopNet are just two examples of these sorts of opportunities. Conversely, many of the products CoreLogic only offers to residential audiences today Could also be offered to commercial real estate audiences. Property tax solutions, appraisal management, Symbility, flood data solutions and building cost data Just a few examples of these sorts of opportunities. We believe that by leveraging existing technology assets into new segments of real estate, We believe that we can achieve all of these synergies while significantly reducing the volatility of CoreLogic's revenue, which Have historically which has historically experienced exposure to microcycles. Much of CoreLogic's revenues are reoccurring, but that's Very different from being subscription revenue.
Reoccurring revenue is volatile, while subscription revenue is much less so and has greater visibility, which allows CFOs to sleep better at night. CoStar Group has a track record of acquiring business with seasonal cyclical revenue variances associated with reoccurring revenue and converting these businesses to predictable and stable 80% of CoStar's revenue is subscription based, up from 67% 5 years ago. LoopNet, Apartments dotcom, ForRent and ApartmentFinder were all businesses with only reoccurring In aggregate, we have now converted the vast majority of the revenue in those products to predictable subscription revenue. We sell our information services Thanks for commercial loans, origination and surveillance on a subscription basis, while CoreLogic sells it on demand basis or on a reoccurring revenue basis. We believe there is a clear opportunity to convert that revenue and other CoreLogic revenue into more predictable subscription revenue.
Since CoStar Group and CoreLogic serve very different industry segments with cycles that are generally not correlated, Combining the companies will further diversify the revenue sources and create a more stable combined revenue stream. In addition to these attractive growth in revenue synergies, there are significant cost synergies in this combination because they're probably CoreLogic provides residential solutions. And while the solutions at CoStar Group and CoreLogic provide are completely different, Both companies invest heavily in very similar underlying technology processes that collect and create real estate information, including property data, photographs, Drone imagery, maps, aerials, market analytics and analytic models. The basic technology required to search for listings and Display data and photos and a map are the same, whether the properties are office buildings or houses for sale. CoStar Group and CoreLogic combined will have nearly In combination, there's vast potential to duplicate processes and achieve significant cost synergies.
Considering both revenue growth and cost synergies, a combination of existing CoStar business with CoreLogic would result in 150,000,000 $250,000,000 annual run rate EBITDA synergies. These synergies alone are worth over several $1,000,000,000 of value for our stockholders. Throughout this process, CoreLogic's advisors, our advisors, analysts' reports and major CoreLogic shareholders who have done the analysis I've agreed that there's little antitrust risk in this combination. CoStar Group provides commercial property listings and analytics to commercial real estate brokers and owners And Internet marketplaces for lead generation for commercial properties for lease and sale. CoreLogic, on the other hand, aggregates In addition, Cordlesser provides multiple listing services, the software and hosting services they need to manage residential listings.
Our respective companies are in completely different markets. CoStar and CoreLogic do not compete with one another in any way. No Our prospect ever chooses between buying a CoreLogic solution versus buying a CoStar Group solution. They cannot because our products are completely different. Given the presence of multiple providers of the publicly available data CoreLogic resells, there are simply no meaningful antitrust We believe that our February 16 proposal with CoreLogic would provide great value to the stockholders of both companies.
We're very excited and we believe that the staff of both companies are very excited to have the opportunity to unlock the amazing possibilities this The next steps involve CoreLogic's Board making the determination that CoStar's offer is the superior The next step involves CoreLogic's Board making the determination, And I hope they do soon that CoStar's offer is the superior offer. After that, Stonepoint, I believe, will have the opportunity to improve their offer. We sincerely hope we can move forward without delay, as I am confident that we could complete a deal rapidly and we expect the transaction could close within 4 to 12 months. At the end of this call, we look forward to taking your questions on our results that we're announcing today. But we will not be taking any questions on CoreLogic, Now let's get on to the rest of our earnings call.
Despite all the dislocation and anguish of the pandemic, 2020 was a record year for our marketplaces and especially for Apartments.com. More renters than ever are looking for a new apartment and more research is taking place from home, with renters taking advantage of the innovative virtual search tools Available on apartments.com and our network of websites. Renters took a breathtaking 170,000,000 virtual tours on our site in 2020, twice as many as the year before. As you're aware, Apartments dotcom has turned in strong performance several years in a row. In 2020, we significantly increased our marketing spend to a record $221,000,000 up 44% versus 2019.
We will not be increasing it again this year. In fact, it's down a touch. The increased spend was clearly exceptionally effective, resulting in record site traffic of 1,000,000,000 network visits according to Google Analytics, a 20% year on year. This extraordinary milestone reflects the company's unmatched growth and investment, garnering over 160,000,000 more visits than last year, strengthening our position as the nation's leading network with more visitors than all other competitors. In total, Visitors to Apartments.com viewed nearly 10,000,000,000 property pages in 2020.
When we look at the Comscore stats, which allow us to compare against peers, the apparbus.comnetworkhadannualsite trafficgrowthof17%. In comparison, RentPath grew its total network site visits by 9%. I've heard others quote stronger growth, Those must be internal numbers, let's say, because we're not able to collaborate them externally. For apartments.com, our record traffic translated to record annual New sales that was up 35% versus 2019 and a full year record 2020 revenue of $599,000,000 a gain of 22% year on year and an addition of $120,000,000 on a Q4 run rate basis. And We expanded the number of advertising properties by 10% year over year, adding over 5,000 new advertisers.
Clearly, all of our initiatives are paying off from our expanded sales force of the mid market to our efforts to better serve the independent owner market. Just one year after launching our online rental tools, Apartments.com is processing nearly $18,000,000 in monthly new rental payments and over 3 That is $5,400,000,000 in annual rent payments now, which is a great start to build from in the years ahead. We were disappointed that we were not able to close our proposed acquisition of RentPath, but believe our time and money was ultimately very well spent in the process. We and RentPath recognized going into the proposed acquisition that the antitrust hurdle could be significant since we were clearly competitors. The fact that RentPath was bankrupt made the failing firm's defense a possible viable path.
The inflection point for us came down to our learning They would be more directly competitive with both us and RentPath. While the Giant intended to partner with us, they would clearly provide a potential Competitive alternative. We felt that in the face of the Giant entering this space, it was unlikely that the FTC would find that RentPath, standalone, represent any significant competitive impact. Hence, we felt the deal was likely to clear. However, during the process, Giant drew significant antitrust scrutiny of their own and we have reason to believe that in conversations with the government, the Giant pledged not to enter our Thanks.
As a result, three things happened. 1, the Giant did not enter our space, which is really good news. Secondly, the antitrust analysis and acquisition of RentPath shifted out of our favor, which was bad news. 3rd, in the SEC's opinion, they State that their investigation concluded that Zillow was not an effective competitor to Apartments.com, which we enjoyed. So as a reward for the nearly a year we spent on RentPath, we had 4 of the 5 best selling quarters in the history of Apartments dot Sold an all time high of $37,500,000 of new sales in the Q2 of 2020 and added over 5,000 new advertisers to our platform to the year at $57,828 and had over 1 third of the properties that began the year advertising Exclusively on RentPath decided to switch their marketing to Apartments.com.
So I think you'll agree that all in all, including with the Recovering nicely after a brief pause earlier this year when we entered the pandemic. From a low base in Q2, CoStar Suite has doubled net new sales for the Q2 in a row demonstrating the resilience and mission critical nature of the product. A number of important CoStar product enhancements we invested in during 2020 are coming to fruition and We're just now beginning to roll out some groundbreaking new functionalities. We just launched the integration of a wealth of commercial mortgage backed Security CMBS information into CoStar. This continually late updated CMBS information It provides valuable insights into more than $1,000,000,000,000 of outstanding commercial loans made to 100,000 commercial properties.
This adds very valuable information on 90,000 of some of the largest commercial leases or tenants. It enables our customers to gain additional visibility into lease expirations Actual rental rates, clients can use this information to attract new clients and influence their pricing or leasing decisions. The new information also prevents regularly updated detailed building operating cost statements on 40,000 large properties. This information is very valuable to investors, tenants, brokers and developers who need to understand what like operating costs might be in a new property or as a performance cost comparison for properties that are already owned, leased or managed. Another important new value we're now bringing to our clients is new visibility into the stress in thousands of properties.
This visibility gives brokers, investors and even our own 10x salespeople insights into who may be pushed into divesting a property soon or who may not have the ability to fund necessary tenant improvements or who might be able to pay leasing commissions in a deal. This information is enhanced by the high frequency market data CoStar provides on new leases and vacancies that are leading indicators as to whether or not the credit on Certain loans is improving or deteriorating. This newly integrated CMBS data gives our lender and mortgage banking clients Great data on maturing loans, refilling opportunities for them to originate new loans. All this information adds additional value to our market With future releases, clients will be able to monitor over time geography and property type, overall new origination trends, default trends, I'd like to give a big shout out to John Baccioni and his team for the great work they've done here. Another 2020 development initiative has begun to integrate the STR data into CoStar Suite.
We moved very quickly on that acquisition. Before I describe that, let me just say that in the year which has brought the hospitality industry to a complete standstill, The performance of STR has been nothing short of miraculous. Client retention was 97% and subscription revenue in Q4 actually grew 5% year over year despite hotels seeing occupancy rates fall about 80% during the dark days of the first half of twenty twenty. So again, STR, like the rest of CoStar Group, is resilient and appears to be almost countercyclical, but certainly downwardly In the Q1 of 2021, we'll be launching the hospitality data embedded into CoStar Suite, which we believe will be of significant interest 4,000 customers and 11,000 prospects we have that are exposed to the hospitality industry. Combined the CMBS tool with STR data also creates a powerful tool for distressed assets, so the timing of our product launches is ideal.
Our significant product enhancements include 250 new hospitality specific fields such as 50,000 new hotel sales comps enhanced with relevant data, including brand, parent company and operator and 22,000 new architectural quality Hotel photos. The most valuable aspect of this integration of unique high frequency STR fully anonymized hospitality data bench I'm sorry, Hospitality performance benchmarking data is the trend in market analysis value we'll bring to our clients. For the first Anywhere ever, our clients will be able to see aggregated hospitality performance by geography and profit class through time. This is daily reliable trend information on occupancy and occupancy and rental rates and all that stuff is super valuable to investors, integration to CoStar later this year that will allow our benchmarking clients to access their information in CoStar in a dramatically more powerful and valuable way. We think that our new hospitality clients will value seeing their performance in much broader context of a wealth of hotel inventory sales Comps, market analysis and forecasts and also the new product will have portfolio level analysis for our clients.
I feel our STR team is doing some very inspired work in this area and I'm confident that our STR clients will Feel that we have delivered beyond expectations and our promise to enhance the STR technology platforms. Finally, an update on the launch of our international product. Later this quarter, we expect to launch a new international polyglot Multi currency and imperial metric version of CoStar. We plan to open up the commercial real estate information our clients see from being domestic only to International, a client who as to now has only seen London data will now have to co start and see news, information and analytics in The U. S, Canada, Europe and the rest of the world, much of the institutional capital flow in commercial real estate is cross border, in fact, the majority of it.
But until now, the information systems have been largely local. We think this change to our product will have a profound impact in long term on the value we can deliver to investors, tenants, We provide on 15 additional European markets. The integration of the global and forest data is going very well with 195,000 properties now loaded into CoStar Suite. The international datasets and Over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to focus intently on reaching out to the thousands of firms that only subscribe to a sub will be a significant revenue accelerator for CoStar. Ultimately, because we can provide our clients more value, more cost Effectively by only producing the one suite product, we intend to sunset selling the individual modules of CoStar.
All of these new features and future releases we're currently working on give tens of thousands of prospective CoStar clients It's capped a breakout year for LoopNet that demonstrated the business' growing traction and countercyclical characteristics. I believe the single most In 2020, we saw strong growth across all levels of our LoopNet advertising solutions. We have achieved strong success and high penetration with Reach, frequency and branding benefit than our standard ad levels. On average, our top level of Diamond ad receives 170x More exposure than does a standard add. In addition, it receives nearly twice the frequency or repeat exposure of With our new investments in retargeting, we identified the most engaged prospects viewing Diamond Ads And we on average achieve a remarkable repeat frequency of them with them of 172x on a monthly basis.
That's Excellent marketing saturation for our clients. Our top tier ads, Diamonds, Plattons and Golds provide unrivaled benefits And net sales bookings of higher tier advertising levels doubled. In comparison, premium listers, which bundles of silver as the basic level or standard level, which are original advertising option, grew 17% year over year from $120,000,000 in 20 to $140,000,000 in 2020. Property owners saw increasing value in our higher tier advertising solutions With Q4 average revenue per listings up 94 percent from $481 to $9.36 per month per ad, with some of them moving into $5,000 $6,000 $7,000 a month. Overall, LoopNet Marketplace revenue grew 20% year over year in 4Q.
Traffic showed strong growth with 37% year over year growth in monthly unique visitors, reaching a record average 8,900,000 unique monthly visitors. We believe that the evidence shows that we're picking up speed with our LoopNet strategy And the total addressable market is in the 1,000,000,000 of dollars. We can interpolate revenue results on a relative GDP basis from a similar marketplace to LoopNet based in Australia and see clear evidence of a multibillion dollar TAM opportunity. The current commercial are also ideal for LoopNet. The sharply rising availabilities across almost every U.
S. Market, there's more demand than normal for advertising solutions Investments.com based on its outperformance, we believe that we are able to look back and demonstrate a very attractive ROI on that investment Because we believe we have a similar excellent investment opportunity to invest in LoopNet Growth, we intend to significantly increase our sales force headcount, SCM Investment, digital and broad based media investments going into 2021. As we've discussed previously, we're building a dedicated LoopNet sales force Alongside our CoStar sales team, in Q4, we added 40 new dedicated LoopNet salespeople. These new dedicated reps in the CoStar Suite sales force continue to aggressively market and sell LoopNet products. To complement our investments in product and sales, this year we're increasing our marketing program for LoopNet targeting all of our constituent networks, Property owners, their brokers, tenants and investors, we're launching our 1st media campaign this quarter across digital channels.
This Are You in the Loop campaign, which launches this week is focused on evaluating the I'm sorry, elevating the Louvet brand to brokers, owners across digital channels, specifically in larger metropolitan areas. These marketing efforts will supplement our growing sales force by increasing both awareness and our best in class We plan to release a broader media campaign a little bit later this spring, announcing LoopNet as the place for all spaces. This campaign will be broadcast across TV and other broad based media outlets in an effort to generate mainstream awareness of the LoopNet brand. By reaching tenants becoming a more colloquial brand, LoopNet plans to replicate some of the successes Apartments dotcom has seen over the past few years. In addition, we continue to intelligently invest in search engine marketing for relevant keywords.
LoopNet already enjoys a considerable I'm proud to say that LoopNet now ranks number 1 for 125,000 relevant commercial keywords on Google And our SCM spend is supporting that with a 4 fold increase in investment since 2019. We will combine investments in SCM and with retargeting programs for increased reach and frequency, LoopNet's retargeting strategy taps into our extensive database of broker, owner, investor tenant And matches them with hyper relevant property ads that match their search criteria, increasing the reach of our property ads and placing our ads across the web On high quality sites, including Santa and Yahoo! BusinessNow, etcetera, etcetera, biznow, etcetera, etcetera. We also take into account unique data regarding which market tenants tend to relocate to or from to ensure we match them with the properties that have a higher Likelihood that they're going to lease into. Keep in mind these investments made in LoopNet also will benefit 10x given the cross pollination of traffic between those sister properties.
And we view using we view this rising tide as lifting both of these sites. Our LoopNet marketing investment in the first half of twenty twenty was $10,000,000 We expect that investment to triple to $31,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty one. Overall, our LoopNet Marketing investment is expected to be around $66,000,000 for the year, which is double the $32,000,000 we invest While we're still in the early stages, we're excited about the progress we're seeing at LoopNet and think this is the time to increase Sales and marketing to help accelerate the conversion of that TAM into CoStar revenue. And we're nearing the end of my brief remarks just about 20 minutes ago. I'm very happy with the initial results we're seeing as we The strength of CoStar, Luzonet and 10x.
The 10x revenue grew 14% Q4 2020 over Q4 2019, Well ahead of our expectations, and Tanix even generated a small profit in the quarter, the first time that's happened in many years. We've already made a number of improvements and investments to the business since we closed the acquisition in June and those improvements are already delivering results. We're focused on driving series of improvements to both the demand side and the supply side of 10x. We need to drive improvement in both areas in order to drive meaningful adoption of revenue growth. Improving the demand side means improving the number of qualified bidders that show up at our online auction events ready to bid.
Improving the supply side means Increasing the number of owners bring valuable properties to the site with realistic pricing expectations. When you increase the demand side dramatically, it makes it much easier to attract more sellers for the supply side. Our first efforts are therefore focused on the demand side and I'm very happy with the results and more I think and know our clients are very happy with those results. We're leveraging the massive audience of CoStar and LoopNet Promoting the 10x Auction properties were the most prominent advertising placements on both of these sites. These internal ads are bringing thousands of new bidders to 10x.
Properties for auction are now visible in both CoStar and LoopNet with rolling counters appearing on the properties for auction counting down to the time of sale. In addition, we've Dramatically increased our investment in 10x related keyword marketing on Google. We've also used our massive database of active investment sales brokers, Buyers and owners and have begun aggressively retargeting it with them with display advertising across the Internet for specific relevant 10X auction properties. As a result, the exposure of auction properties on the TENEX site has increased significantly with unique visitors doubling from Q3 to Q4, Our efforts and investments are paying off and we can see clear improvements in the demand side. The average number of fully approved bidders to 10.7 in Q4 'twenty.
The number of those watching bidders that engaged and placed a bid increased 66% from 2.2 in Q4 19 to 3.6 in Q4 2020 on a per property basis. This increase in demand has a result we wanted, which is the percentage of properties that came to auction successfully sold, increased 42 point 6 percent going from 43.8 percent in Q4 'nineteen to 63% in Q4 20. This is the so called trade rate and it's now approaching double the industry average offline trade rate. Since we're only paid when the property trades, this increase in trade rate resulted in an increase in our revenue. Moving forward to 'twenty one, we I do not think it really made a whole lot of sense to do that, but moving on.
The dynamics now are completely different. If NASDAQ had simply stuck With the OTC pricing model, none of us would probably have ever heard of NASDAQ. The 10X has historically charged the buyer 5% fee. On the larger properties that's more than the brokers commission, 10X has historically offered consistent rebates and discounts, which means their stickers price could scare people off, but their effective price was much less. Looking at the gross margin per sale, there's plenty of room to reduce price with an eye increasing volume and more than making up for the reductions in the volume of a vibrant marketplace we believe it will create.
We expect this pricing simplification will create a modest near term revenue headwind, but ultimately will increase total platform volume, especially volume from first users of the platform. We're expanding the sales force. 10x currently has only 25 salespeople And we plan to grow that number significantly in 'twenty one. In addition, we plan to leverage our team of over 1,000 CoStar market researchers This daily contact with property owners and managers provides a great opportunity to source new properties for sale for 10x. We're making a very significant investment in marketing in 'twenty one to drive demand and supply to 10x.
We have developed a broad campaign for TV, digital media retargeting increased SEM. These the tagline these campaigns will use is don't just sell it, 10x it. This tagline focuses our prospects on the fact that a property is much more likely to sell online 10x that is offline and is much likely to sell faster as well. We plan to use a Battle of the Big gamification Campaign to drive visibility traffic and traction with the broader real estate community in 'twenty one. 100 of thousands of CRE investors, Owners and brokers will be invited to a number of 10X auctions where they'll be able to guess what 10 properties will ultimately sell for in the auction.
The more accurate the guest, We're likely to win, be a lot of fund, a lot of prizes, a lot of money. We think a lot of folks will show up and play. So we're increasing our investment in 10x Marking by 400 percent from $9,000,000 in 2020 to potentially $36,000,000 in 'twenty one, a fourfold increase. We have made great progress on our 10x integration plans in 'twenty and now is the right time to accelerate our investments to be ready to take Full advantage of the expected increase in distressed assets coming to market. While it's difficult to quantify the amount of timing and expected increase in distressed assets, Currency MBS foreclosure rates are trending upwards and are now above levels seen at this stage in Last recession of 'eighteen-'nine.
Our estimates indicate potentially 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of distressed properties will Now I'm going to Skip the economy update section of my script and start moving closer to the CFO section. The challenges of 2020 highlighted In 2021, we expect to deliver double digit organic revenue growth and margin expansion, While simultaneously investing very aggressively in LoopNet and 10x, and we believe in those investments. We're going to use our strong balance sheet and successful acquisition CFO, Scott Wheeler. Thank you for that introduction. I will try and display my youthful vigor as I march through Comments today.
Thank you, Andy. So 2020 was a great year for CoStar, both strategically and financially. And personally, At least I find it much easier to sleep at night with $3,800,000,000 in the bank, a negative leverage and a shiny new investment grade debt rating sitting Now, there certainly stays a great comeback rally after the early pandemic scrambled our plans And we managed to beat the original 2020 profit guidance that we gave way back in February. I think it's a great complement to the strength Our business model, the value of our products and the execution focus of our leaders and all of our teams. Of course, you throw in a few exciting acquisitions along the way and 2020 As Andy mentioned in his comments, we're excited for the potential opportunity to add CoreLogic to our business, But I won't be providing any financial comments nor will we take any questions on this topic during the Q and A session.
So on to some color on the results. So revenue here Andy talked about was up nicely in the 4th quarter. Margins were also Improved in the 4th quarter, our adjusted EBITDA grew over the year and from the Q3 and we ended Outperforming the high end of our guidance by $23,000,000 which is a fantastic outcome, even as we continue to invest to support our which involved the marketing investments we made this year for Apartments.com and increased marketing that we began later in the year for LoopNet. Before I go through our sector results, you'll notice that our EBITDA and our net income results for the Q4 and the full year of 2020 $59,500,000 charge is part of our G and A expenses. This charge includes settlement of the termination fee for $52,000,000 as well as the cost for extension payments that we made earlier in the year.
The total $59,500,000 charge is removed in our adjusted EBITDA calculation As non recurring acquisition related expenses. The approximate income on net income for the year is $44,000,000 or 1.15 So on to our revenue by services, CoStar Suite grew 5% in the 4th quarter and 8% for the year, which is a little bit ahead of what we projected back in October. We've seen stronger than expected sequential performance in CoStar Suite in both sales and renewal rates, representing the low point of growth at around 3% to 4% with the most significant difficult comparables to get past for the next year. The Information services revenue grew 16% in the 4th quarter and 47% for the full year and includes the impact of the STR acquisition, which we closed in mid Q4 of 2019. Excluding STR, revenue in information services in 2020 was broadly in line With revenue in 2019 for both the full year and the 4th quarter, as we move past finally the high levels of one time implementation revenues that We're in our 2019 results for the Real Estate Manager business.
Subscription revenue growth remains strong in Real Estate Manager, up 11% in the 4th quarter and increasing 13% for the full year of 2020. STR results in 2020 were very encouraging as we work to integrate STR data and products As we all know, the hospitality sector sort of took it on the chin in 2020 with hotel revenue per available room down as much 50% in the U. S. And up to 90% in some European markets. Nevertheless, STR proved vital to the operations of our hotel And our revenues grew in the Q4 sequentially, up 5% to 6% over the Q3 of the year.
Retention rates on SGR subscriptions remain over 5% and STR subscription revenues increased in both the 3rd and 4th quarters of this year, a strong and a positive sign as we work towards launching Information services sector in 2021, starting at approximately 7% revenue growth in the Q1 of 2021 and improving as we continue throughout the year. We had another great year in the apartments business with 23% growth in the 4th quarter and 22% revenue growth for the year, all of which The number of properties advertising with us increased around 10% in the 4th quarter, while the average revenue per property increased by Approximately 11%. Revenue per property increase is a result of customers continuing to trade up to higher value add packages as performance in sales and revenues for apartments with revenue growth of approximately 20% in the Q1 and 19% to 20% for the full year. That was my 20 Growth alarm, it goes off every time I get a business growing over 20% organically in a quarter. We expect 2021 revenue growth in dollar terms will exceed the dollar revenue growth in 2021 for apartments as we continue to focus penetrating the mid and the small property market sectors.
The commercial property and land sector grew 51% in the 4th quarter and 31% for Including the impact of the 10x acquisition, organic growth was 15% for both the Q4 and the full year respectively. For And for the full year. Organically, excluding the revenue from the TEDx and HomeSnap acquisitions, we expect growth of approximately 20% for the full year. LoopNet revenue growth was stronger than ever at 20% for the full year of 2020 20% in the 4th quarter with Signature ad revenue growing 50% on a full We expect LoopNet revenue growth to continue at around 20% in 2021 with growth of around 15% to 15% in the Q1 against tougher year over year revenue comparisons. Revenue in our land and small business marketplaces were essentially flat in the 4th quarter and grew at single digit rates for the year.
The small business marketplace in particular was sharply impacted by the pandemic in 2020. We expect growth rates to recover in both lands and business for sale marketplaces in 2021 with revenue increases in the 8% to 10% range. 10x delivered a strong finish to the year with $19,000,000 of revenue in the 4th quarter $32,000,000 in revenue in 2020, Exceeding our initial revenue estimates and delivering positive pro form a growth year over year since the acquisition. Now each of the years 3 years prior to our acquisition of 10x, Revenue had declined by approximately $10,000,000 per year. Of course, one positive data point is not yet a trend, but the metrics so far are promising for 10x And due to the transactional nature of the revenue in 10x, we expect to see revenue fluctuate from quarter to quarter depending on economic conditions, Historical seasonality as well as our own investment and integration initiatives.
Historical seasonality for 10x indicates lower transaction volumes typically in the Q1 and stronger volumes in the Q4. Our 2021 forecast assumes around $50,000,000 to $55,000,000 of revenue for 10x with approximately 20% of that revenue in the Q1. We have built our revised pricing rate card for 10x into our outlook, but have not assumed a material volume lift from distressed property sales or from our marketing investments in 2021, Making this what I consider a relatively cautious forecast until we see how the year starts to turn out for the business. Homesnap is our latest addition to the commercial property and land family, having completed the acquisition in late December of 2020. We did not include any Homesnap result for the handful of days that we own the company in 2020.
HomeSnap revenues are comprised of both advertising and subscription revenue, With advertising making up approximately 2 thirds of the revenue. Our 2021 forecast assumes around $50,000,000 Revenue for Homesnap with approximately $10,000,000 of that revenue in the Q1. Pro form a growth rate of the business is a little over 20% year over year in 2021. Profit contribution of HomeSnap in 2021 is expected to be Around negative $5,000,000 as we continue to invest for growth, we absorb both the acquisition deferred revenue adjustments, which are typical in acquisitions of this type and the cost of moving the approximate 165 Homesnap employees to our CoStar compensation and benefit plans. Our gross margin was 82% in the 4th quarter and 81% for the year, up 2 full percentage points from last year and 4 full percentage points This is a great reflection of the strong leverage that's inherent in our subscription business model.
We believe we can 81% for 2021 with margins early in the year around 80% as we add Homesnap to our results and improving to around 82% by the end Net income was $36,000,000 in the 4th quarter $227,000,000 for the full year, which 4th quarter and 16% for the full year. 4th quarter adjusted EBITDA was $167,000,000 up 18% from the 4th Last year and came in approximately $23,000,000 above the high end of our guidance range. The improved adjusted EBITDA Was a result of outperformance of $9,000,000 in revenue, lower spending on personnel and marketing and improvements in our bad debt levels from earlier in the year, which is certainly a welcome sign. The resulting adjusted EBITDA margin of 38% in the 4th quarter was a full $3,800,000,000 as of December 31, 2020. We generated almost $500,000,000 in operating cash flow in 2020, $486,000,000 to be exact.
And we deployed approximately $440,000,000 of that positive cash flow to buy 10x and HomeSnap. In addition, if you've been following news in Richmond, Virginia lately, which I do religiously, you will have noticed we purchased a parcel of land adjacent to our current Richmond location in And we recently purchased the Richmond building that we've occupied under sublease for $130,000,000 in the Q1 of 2021. Both of these purchases provide a variety of expansion options for our teams in Richmond or perhaps we should become a digital commercial property flipper. I hear it's a trending new business model that is emerging these days, but we'll leave that for a future earnings call. On to the performance metrics, which won't include anything for HomeSnap until future quarters.
We achieved $49,000,000 of net new sales in the 4th quarter, rounding out a great second half recovery in sales following the pandemic disruption in the first half of the year. We saw Continued solid sequential improvement in CoStar bookings and another very strong quarter in departments. The strength of our sales efforts along with planned In both sales and marketing in the coming year are expected to keep us on track for strong double digit organic growth in our subscription businesses in 2021. Our sales force totaled approximately 900 people at the end of the Q4 of 2020, an increase of around 40 people from the 3rd quarter and up over 50 people from the Q4 of 2019. We continue to build out our dedicated LoopNet sales team as we discussed last which accounted for most of the growth in our sales team in the Q4.
So for perspective, at the end of 2020, our largest sales organizations are CoStar with 340 sales people, apartments with around 320 sales people and LoopNet with 115 sales The renewal rate on annual contracts for the Q4 of 2020 was 90%, slightly better than the 89% in Q3. It's great to see our renewal rate moving back up. You recall earlier this year that there were concerns of a deeper, more sustained drop in renewal rates similar to what we saw in the last And it looks as though those concerns can be laid to rest at least for now. In fact, the Q4 2020 renewal rate is essentially in line was the Q4 of 2019. The renewal rate in the Q4 for customers who have been subscribers for 5 years or longer was 95%, in line with the renewal rate of 95% in the Q3 of 2020.
Subscription revenue on annual contracts accounts for 78% of our revenue in the 4th quarter, down approximately 5 percentage points compared to last year. The decline is entirely due to the addition of into the portfolio this year. If we include subscriptions on shorter duration contracts such as 3, 6 or 9 months, Approximately 92% of our revenue is subscription based. I will now discuss our outlook for 2021 in We expect full year revenue in a range of $1,925,000,000 to $1,940,000,000 in 21, which implies an annual growth rate of 17% and the midpoint for the year. As I mentioned previously, our outlook includes approximately 50,000,000 for the Homesnap business, which we acquired at the end of 2020.
On an organic basis, excluding the full year impact of Homesnap and 10x, which we acquired in mid-twenty 20, we expect growth of approximately 12% to 13% for the full year of 2021. We anticipate organic growth rates will be lower in the Q1 in the 11% to 12% range as this is expected to be the low quarter for CoStar Suite. Throughout the year, we expect organic growth rate to improve sequentially and finish the year around 14%. For the Q1 of 2021, we expect revenue in the range of $450,000,000 to $455,000,000 representing revenue growth of 15% year over year at the midpoint of the range. For the full year of 2021, we expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of $640,000,000 to $650,000,000 which implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of a little over 33% at the midpoint of this range.
Excluding both the revenue and the adjusted EBITDA of Home Our adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to improve by approximately 120 basis points in 2021 to 34.5% compared to the adjusted EBITDA margins of a little over 33% that we achieved in 2020. So overall, our underlying margins are improving over 100 basis points year over year in 2021 to a little over 34% prior to the acquisition of HomeSnap. We plan to increase our investment in marketing in 2021 approximately $345,000,000 in 2021, an increase of around $70,000,000 over our marketing costs in 2020. The Homesnap acquisition brings along a little over $20,000,000 of the increased marketing spend with the remaining net increase focused on LoopNet and 10x As Andy talked about, when you think about it just a few years ago, increased investments of this scale like the ones we expect in 2021 would have had a For example, in 2021, our expense growth Without counting the recent acquisitions year over year into our results, this is probably around $120,000,000 which happens to be about the same amount of marketing investment that was made back in 2015 when we launched Apartments.com. You may recall at that time that $120,000,000 Apartments.com marketing investment wiped out all of the CoStar Group's profit.
By contrast, in 2021, we can make that same size investment and not only will it not decrease our profit level, We will generate close to $100,000,000 more adjusted EBITDA in 2021 than we did in 2020. This is a significant growth advantage as we continue to enter new market sectors. We expect adjusted EBITDA of approximately $140,000,000 to $145,000,000 in the Q1 of 21 for an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 31% 32% and up approximately $20,000,000 compared to the Q1 of last year. In terms of the timing of adjusted EBITDA across the remaining quarters of the year, we expect 2nd quarter adjusted EBITDA slightly lower than the Q1 as our marketing expense Typically increases in the Q2. In the Q3, adjusted EBITDA is expected to move back up above the Q1 level with 4th quarter Increasing significantly as the marketing spend is expected to tail off near the end of the year.
In terms of earnings, we expect full year non GAAP net income For the Q1 of 2021, we expect non GAAP net income per diluted share in the range of $2.33 to $2.43 based on 39,500,000 shares. Now with 2020 in the rearview mirror, I believe we're firmly on track to achieve our long term objectives of $3,000,000,000 in run rate revenue and 40% adjusted EBITDA margins in 2023. 2020 was certainly an amazing year for our company, for CoStar Group. We ended the year with strong double digit revenue growth, both in total and organic revenue And despite the continuing global pandemic and uncertain economic environment, we generated over $500,000,000 of profit and nearly the same in operating cash flow, while strengthening our balance sheet with both equity and investment grade debt. The acquisitions we completed represent significant strategic and financial growth for the company and the acquisitions we are pursuing can truly transform the business.
Thank you for supporting CoStar this year in so many ways And I look forward to updating you on our results as we navigate the year 2021. Bill, I'll turn the call now Over to you, so you can issue the ground rules for today's fun and exciting question and answer session.
Thank you, Scott. Two items before we start the Q and A this evening. First, one question per participant, so make it an exceptionally insightful or probing one. Or a probing one. And second, a reminder that we will not be taking any questions about our bid to acquire CoreLogic.
Angela, would you please assemble the questioners for the queue?
Of course. Our first question is from the line of Sterling Auty with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Hi, guys. So in terms of the marketing investment that you're making across the business, what gives you the comfort that now is the right time that you can Actually lift the gas pedal on spending for apartments for the multifamily segment.
Well, we are I would say that we've got the pedal down pretty firmly. We're well over 200 some 1000000 there on that. We're not increasing it. We're easing it off a little bit, but we're still there at a very aggressive pace. So it's a little bit of net new investment into 10x and LoopNet, but we think we need to balance those investments across We think the ROI in LoopNet and 10x will be More impactful over the next 2 to 3 years than a similar investment in Apartments.com.
That's not to say anything negative about Apartments.com,
This is from the line of Pete Christiansen with Citi. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thanks for the question. Andy, obviously outside of CoreLogic, are
you feeling about the M and A environment? Are there
other potential assets out there that are of interest? And How are you feeling about valid valuations for potential acquisitions? Sure. So other than that $6,900,000,000 or $7,000,000,000 deals out there. There actually are Other things out there that we are engaged with and developing.
We have definitely and so That is not the only thing occurring. There are other things occurring. They all have a Similar theme right now for us. They're all going they're supporting the kinds of directions you're already familiar with. They're just strategic Building blocks on the same theme.
The valuations, I would Say that I have certainly seen a couple of deals going by at valuations that Left me very, very comfortable not to participate. And I took my hat off to those folks I said, wow, good work. That's a heck of a valuation. But there are a couple of things recently. And usually my skepticism on some of the valuations I've seen in some places recently Around the total addressable market relative to the valuation.
So they may be performing well in their context or in But their field is relatively small and doesn't have the long term growth. So there's a little frothness out there, but there are also some real value plays out there that we're focused on.
Your next question is from the line of Ryan Tomasello with KBW. Please go ahead.
Andy, I was hoping you could dive a bit deeper into your strategy for entering the residential portal space. There's obviously a lot to talk about there, but I think one key question is how you intend to cost effectively build consumer traffic Considering the existing well branded competition in that space, what traffic synergies do you think the existing Apartments dotcom audience And is there any competitive advantage that Homesnap's strong user base of agents can bring to help you build that consumer traffic on the residential
Yes. So we're not we've obviously been thinking about this and building that strategy and we I believe there is a pathway to build organic traffic very cost effectively. We are not in a position to share our thinking on some of that right now for competitive reasons. But I think that these things, building traffic does not happen overnight. I mean these things, you build this up through time.
We obviously know how to build up traffic through time. We've done that. Any time we enter into a new space and Try to build traffic. There's generally skepticism that you can build traffic in that space through time and we've proven we can do that. And in particular, we entered the apartment space 7 years after Zillow had made it a significant priority.
We ultimately were We're clearly more successful in doing that. I think one of the important considerations as you build a marketplace or build tracker on a marketplace Is what is your revenue model and how much how strong is that revenue model and will that revenue model fund Investments to continue growing traffic or is your revenue model actually a drag on your ability to grow traffic? And I think we see those conditions existing in the home sale market. Definitely, HomeSnap is a useful component in this and there's 1 or 2 other useful components that we're looking at. But There's no guarantees on any of these things, but we are pretty excited to get working on it.
And we have a Pretty clear view as to where we think we can take it and how we can get it there. And I'm sorry, I can't give you more detail and stuff, but I want to have success And telling you about it will make it less likely.
Your Next question is from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. Commercial Property and Land saw a step up in organic revenue growth this quarter as you continue to sell higher tier ads in LoopNet and you're guiding the further How much of your client base do you believe you've penetrated with higher tier ads in LoopNet? And how sustainable Is 15% to 20% plus organic growth in commercial property and land?
I really appreciate that question. I really do. So we have just I mean, it is really early, early days on these So we've been very successful with that standard ad placement. In fact, in some markets, we have too much In Southern Florida, we might be 80 some percent penetrated, which I think is too high. But I think we are less than 1% Trade these higher tier ads and that's because we've just begun to really focus on bringing them out.
As you remember, we acquired LoopNet. We separated out the information side from LoopNet, upsell them to CoStar and then began developing More fully the potential LoopNet marketplace, we began aggressively bringing the Apartments dotcom Styled tiered advertising levels in the LoopNet last year was the first time we began doing this. So this is really the 1st year of doing that properly And you have I think there's if we have 1,000, there's 75,000 we're keeping an eye on, but you have 2 components moving. 1 is penetration into which properties want to move up that Prominence level in LoopNet and the other is what people are willing to pay for that top position. And both those items Moving.
So, it's sustainable for a decade or more. I feel comfortably That we could sustain this for a long, long time.
Your next question is from the line of Jeff Moorer with Baird.
Like how much of the revenue base for that line item is still for comp or tenant module clients? How much uplift do you typically see when they transition over to Suite, etcetera? Thanks.
Sure. So I'm going to be giving you These are not precise numbers. I'm just going to give you numbers that are an educated guesstimate in order to give you a feel. I believe Probably 15%, 20% of that customer base is not on the full suite. And I think that typically it is a doubling as they go into the full suite.
At any time you do something, Leila, definitely it's time for us to do this. And I think it's an opportunity that On reflection, maybe we should have done it last year, but now as we bring in the CMBS and the international and the STR and we think we have 3 or 4 innovations coming in that are equally powerful. As we keep doing this, we need to it's time to leave behind These partial solutions, it just doesn't represent our brand well. And we can it actually saves us money to stop supporting these So I think it's in the tens of millions of revenue, potential revenue comfortably. And I think more importantly, I think when it's done, I think the customer is happier.
I think they appreciate a much more powerful product. And then just half of it is they still
Your next question is from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens, please go ahead.
Good evening, guys.
Good evening. Good evening.
My one question is, Scott, you mentioned the TTM retention rate. I think you said it was 90% this quarter versus 89% last quarter. That's a question that we've gotten a lot and we've obviously paid a lot of attention to that. Could you unpack that a little more? Is that small brokers not maybe going out of business as much as we thought?
Is it large brokers spending more? Is there a lever in there that Could give us more comfort in the resilience of that in the face of what could be a pretty tough CRE market? Thank you.
Yes. Sure, Brett. The concerns as we went through the 1st to second quarter downturn was where were these renewal rates bottom And if you recall, they went from 90% to down into the low 80s in the last recession. And so we watched closely really by customer type and by customer size. Large customers all stayed with us.
There was really no increase at Brokers that dropped out over the summertime, which also led to a little bit of increase in our bad debt. We saw in the later part of the year that certainly has trickled off and We're seeing all property or all customer types as well as customer sizes now are back to, I'll just say, The renewal rates that we were seeing at the beginning of the year at the end of last year, so it feels like those that were going to drop out have dropped out and the rest are operating In a stable way and our sales are picking up. So momentum is good, direction of travel is good And we think that, that will continue into 2021.
Your next question is from the line of Mario Carlo Glassy with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Maybe you can continue with that thought And actually maybe can you talk more about your sales cycle and during Q2 last year that was more or less frozen, Decision making basically stopped. And just wanted to see, do you think some of
the success in the back half of
the year was just some of that Q2 Q2 being pushed to the right, or is this more or less sustainable going into 2021? And even maybe with a ramp in GDP and economic activity in 2021, Is there a lot of room for you guys to be your guide based on that? So
when we saw the response in mid-twenty 20, Especially in the marketplaces with the online traffic going to record levels and then the sales accelerating, We assume that, one, there's clearly a pandemic effect in there and then there's I think a continued longer term adoption That will stick from that and that experience, both from a customer perspective and our sales effectiveness perspective. So certainly there's more online eyeballs, there's more effectiveness of the online advertising and the effectiveness of our media That our customers can use to tour properties clearly are a big hit in the year. On the other side, our sales effectiveness in our Apartments.com Salesforce able to effectively and professionally connect with our customers and prospects through Zoom and remote working They actually produce thousands of more effective customer meetings and maintain their same high NPS scores throughout the year, allowing them to generate More sales per person than they have ever before. So we don't see either of those trends backing down either as we come out of the end of this year or going into next year. And with the momentum we have building our mid market sales force, which we will increase, the growth we're starting to see in the IO property space And then the translation of the same effects into LoopNet as we build our separate sales force in the LoopNet marketplace, I think we're going to see that same strength and that same momentum throughout the year and we'll still have the CoStar sales force selling the LoopNet marketplace products as well until that Loop Net force is built up to full speed.
So I think we have a lot of momentum behind us, add a good bit of marketing to LoopNet and Future is certainly bright with our sales efforts, I assume. And if it doesn't make it, we'll take it out with
And your final question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William
On 10x, you talked about not investing heavily yet on the supply side. But have you seen any momentum on the supply side, I guess, in the second half of twenty twenty with momentum you had bringing in more bidders? And then related to Tenex, any update on what you've seen in terms of distressed property sales? And have you assumed Any pickup in distress activity in the 2021 guidance or would that be potential upside?
Okay. So starting with the second question first. We have not assumed Pickup in distress though, that may be possible that that will happen. Especially as there's a return to normalcy, some folks At that point calculate, it just doesn't work anymore on their property. Income sheet doesn't work anymore or their LTV doesn't work So I think there could be, but it's not in our forecast.
We actually are so we closed that in June. Yes. Yes. So it hasn't been long. And so we really jumped into this both feet and we're really just on the Demand side because that's the first component you got to build.
And it's really a bit early to really expect Any movement on the supply side because we're just now beginning to turn in results. I was wandering through my neighborhood the other day. I saw 2 guys Drinking a lot of beers and chipping golf balls in their front lawn, I stopped and said hello to them, we chatted a little bit, Determine the guy that just brought 4 multifamily properties to 10X that he didn't expect to sell I think he actually was visiting But that story gets around. He's going to tell people. He's with a big brokerage firm that will get around.
But some of the But that's slower. Some of the investments we're making in marketing in 2021, I think, absolutely will drive the supply side. So The broad media campaigns about the value of don't auction it, 10x it, don't sell it, 10x it, That will reach a lot of the supply side. Our performance numbers that we can use as sales demonstrations Fantastic and those will be very compelling. Also the gamification of the product where we hope to bring in Hundreds of thousands of players on the supply side and educate them on the platform while they're having fun and winning some I think that will drive the supply side.
We're educating Lisa Ruggles' massive team in Richmond, Virginia to educate the people they talk to All the time when they first bring a property to market and they're going to educate them about the opportunities on 10x, that should drive the supply side. And then as we grow the number of sales people, that will grow the supply side. So I think that by I hope that by the end of 2021, we can report Really good progress on both the number of bidders showing up to each property and the number of total properties going to market and the trade Great. And if those things are all coming together, there is the potential for a very significant network effect and that's because The results you get from aggregating a huge community of buyers to an online marketplace is in almost all cases vastly superior to an off client, anecdotal, email blast kind of non scale marketplace. So I like where it's going and I hope we can show real progress in the supply side and the mine side next year.
And that's what we're working towards. But I'm really pleased with what we've done since just a July close. And I think the head 10X is on its way over after the call to work on some more stuff with us. So anyhow, well, I think that is probably the last call answer we have or question we That
is correct.
And so I think we can wrap up the call and we certainly Scott and I appreciate Scott, Bill and I certainly appreciate you joining us for this Q4 year end earnings call. And we look forward to updating you on more interesting developments in earning calls in the near future. And apologize
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.