RoofStock Neighborhood Rating system

[Christian Zarate]

I have been considering buying a house through RoofStock. Since this would be an OOS investment I would like to make sure that the place is a descent neighborhood. However, I dont know how RoofStock's star rating system compares to the traditional A-F system that most investment literature uses. Is 5 stars an A neighborhood? 4 stars a B neighborhood, etc. 

I know that multiple people in BP have used RoofSotck, could you please 

1. Comment on what star neighborhoods you bought your property on, and how do you feel it would equate to the traditional A-F model? 

2. What neighborhood star would you recommend for my filter as a minimum? (I know it depends on strategy, hence if you could I would love to hear your reasoning behind your recommendation)

[Jason G.]

Originally posted by @Christian Zarate:

Thank you very much @Brian Ploszay! I will definitely do that. Yes. It looks like their algorithm does not take into account crime rate, but it does take into account income level and school ratings. 

Just FYI for anybody reading this thread, I found this link describing their algorithm:

https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/roofstock-neighbo...

@Linda Dalton, @Jason Gines, @Eric P., I believe you bought properties through RoofStock, do you have any guidance and/or opinion on their star neighborhood rating system? Did you use it? What star properties did you end up buying?

I ignore their neighborhood rating system completely.  While I think very highly of Roofstock, their rating system in my opinion is useless.  Like they are conjuring their ratings out of thin air.  It is pretty easy to figure out what type of neighborhood an area is based on school ratings, crime statistics, news articles, google/bing street maps, community review websites, and even just searching for the county or town in BiggerPockets.  Also,  once you get familiar with the market you can have a good idea of what type of area it is, A/B/C, etc. just by looking at the average price of the unit for different areas.