Real Estate investors spend a ton of time searching for good deals. Many of us live by the adage that ‘if the deals are easy to find, they won’t be good deals.’ Tons of time is spent:
-
Combing through MLS listings
-
Searching Craigslist ads
-
Mailing to motivated seller categories (probate, divorce, foreclosure, etc.)
-
Bandit Signs
Don’t get me wrong – marketing is key to keeping the deal pipeline full. But wouldn’t it be nice to automate a lot of the grunt work in targeting your marketing.
We don’t want to send a ‘We Buy Houses’ postcard to everyone on the planet. We send them to people who are likely to give us a good deal.
People whose houses suck.
Or their situation sucks.
They. Just. Want. Out.
But they’re greedy like everyone else. They are not going to just hand you the keys. They will want something for the place. Just because Uncle Bob passed away, doesn’t mean the nieces and nephews have a great deal for you.
You have to decide if the difference between what the sellers want and what you can make on the place is worth your time and money.
Wouldn’t it be great to look only at properties that meet your criteria for profit?
Show Me the Money!
Most of the big property websites like Zillow and Trulia are meant for homebuyers. Even with the MLS, the primary search criteria are things like location, bedrooms and bathrooms.
As far as us real estate investors are concerned, the place can have 50 bedrooms and zero bathrooms. Or vice versa. Our question is:
“Does the place make money?”
Trouble is you won’t know if it makes money until you run the numbers. That means:
-
Talking to the seller
-
Visiting the property
-
Collecting information
-
Performing analysis
You’ve gotta do all of that before you know if it’s worth pursuing. The property could be a total dud. But you don’t know when you find the lead.
You can waste a lot of time on duds.
There is a website that can filter out the duds. It’s like Zillow for real estate investors. It’s called Revestor. It even looks a bit like Zillow on its home page.
The difference comes when you put in a search area or property. For example, we put in the city of San Antonio, Texas, to see what comes up.
You can definitely narrow your search to a small town, a street or a particular address. Whatever you choose, Revestor will come up with lots of properties in the surrounding area.
Below the map is a list of the properties. But unlike many other property search websites, these properties are ranked by how lucrative they would be as an investment. Specifically they are listed by their CAP rate and cash flow if you purchased them and rented them out.
The data comes primarily from Zillow’s estimate of the property value and local rents, so you may have to take some of the data with a grain of salt.
When you click on a property on the list (or in the map), it will give you options. You can either save it to look at later or learn more details about it.
The details page provides a lot of useful information and analysis to the investor, based on typical ways people buy investment property:
-
Purchase Price
-
Estimated Rents
-
Expenses such as property taxes, insurance, HOA dues, mortgage payments
-
Hold Period
-
Cash-on-Cash Return
-
Net Profit
Those little scroll bars under each question in the details page allow you to slide them to different numbers. You can easily change the numbers to play lots of ‘what if’ scenarios based on your knowledge of the area.
Specific details of how Revestor calculates all your investment criteria can be found here.
Obviously, you will have to add in your own rehab costs once you do your estimates. Revestors can’t automate your entire due diligence. But it can cut your search time down considerably.
Now you can quickly narrow your search down to properties worth investigating. If the property is on the market, Revestor will display the contact link for the agent listing the property.
What Else Should I Know?
Revestor also runs a blog with helpful tips about real estate investing. The site is run by a team of experienced investors who want to share their knowledge with you.
Sorting through all the properties is completely free. You can register on the site and create saved searches with your own personal investment criteria.
Then you can have them send you a daily email with your search criteria. Who doesn’t like leads coming to their inbox? To have the leads ranked by their profitability is even better.
One thing to note...
There is a Revestor app that you can download onto your phone. The folks at Revestor have been upgrading their website, but they have not upgraded the app. So use the website on your phone for the full functionality, not the app.
The web is always coming up with better and better ways to do things. Real estate investing is not an exception. Maybe it’s time to stop chasing down every house that’s for sale in your neighborhood? Maybe you should start just targeting the really profitable ones?
Automate – You can’t do it all yourself. Employees and VAs are convenient. But they can get expensive and make mistakes. Tech can perform lots of tasks very well and very cheaply.
Do Your Due Diligence – That’s what real estate investors specialize in. You can automate the gathering of the numbers, but you and your gut are still the decision makers.
Don’t Fall in Love with Properties – Homeowners buy on emotions, many times. Investors buy on cash flow and ROI. Stick to the numbers when finding properties.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.