Finding rental properties

[Kelei X.]

Hey all!

I'm fairly new to real estate investing, and I was wondering how you typically find rental properties (1-4 units) to invest in. Zillow and Trulia don't seem to have a specific filter for rental properties, and you can't filter by rental yield. Biggerpockets has a marketplace, but it seems like the filtering options are very limited, and I have to manually look up whether or not the neighborhood the property is in is good. I essentially have to go through the listings one by one. LoopNet is mostly for commercial properties that are out of my price range. Roofstock is pretty close to what I'm looking for, but it's only available in Florida, and the deals on there aren't great. There are individual turnkey providers for rental properties, but what I find is that most of the properties listed are in working/lower middle class neighborhoods, and selection is usually limited.

Is there some sort of Zillow/Trulia type site where I can just do a search of all rental property listings and filter by area, neighborhood grade (including crime rate, school quality, job growth, population growth, vacancy rate, median household income, etc.), school quality and yield? I'm looking for high yield investments properties in A grade neighborhoods with growing local economies that can support housing prices.

[Zach Evanish]

@Kelei X.  Hello and welcome to the wonderful wonder of real estate investing! I think you are going to really enjoy it. I have been working in the single family rental space for a little over five years now and my only regret is that I didn't start sooner so congrats on getting going.

I work at Roofstock so I wanted to provide some feedback on your comment about our site and also give you my thoughts on your question because your question is exactly the reason we started our company. It's really hard (especially for an out of state investor) to find quality cash flowing single family rentals!

Realtor.com/MLS/Trulia/Zillow all of these sites are great but they are all focused on helping you find your primary residence. None off these sites have the tools that are required to properly underwrite an investment property.

Loopnet: As you correctly stated Loopnet is primarily for commercial real estate. While there are some single family homes on the site they are few and far between.

Turn-Key: Like in any industry there are some great turn-key companies and some that are not so great. Unfortunately they are only in one or maybe two markets.

Roofstock: We built Roofstock as the first on-line marketplace created exclusively for investing in leased single family rental homes that generate cash flow from day one. Our goal is to provide tools that were previously only accessible to institutional level investors to investors of all size and experience. We launched on March 3rd with properties in Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa and will have properties available in Atlanta and Northern California in the first week of May and plan on being in all of the biggest single family investment markets in short order. While I am no doubt biased I think we have some very attractive deals on our site. I will message you directly as I don't want to go long on your thread.