10 Reasons why I bought a property on ROOFSTOCK

[Aj Parikh]

If you are researching for a property out of state or looking to buy a turnkey property, Roofstock offers multiple reasons to buy a property on their website because of its investor friendly features. Below are some of the reasons I bought mine on Roofstock

1. Ease of Placing offer: Roofstock has the ability to place an offer on the property on the website itself without talking to anyone. It can be done in three steps and you can also pay your Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) of $500 in those three steps with a credit card which will be kept on hold until the transaction is finalized.

1. Creating a roof to create a funnel for deals: If you are looking to find deals, you can create a "roof" with your criteria like "List Price", "Neighborhood rating", "Location", "Contingencies"

1. Latest Inspection Report - Every property listed on Roofstock has an Inspection Report included for the investors to view and see what the state of the property is and what the estimated rehab costs would be. If the inspection report is more than 4 months old, Roofstock will pay for the inspection after you place an offer and you can still back out of the transaction if you don't like what you see post inspection.

1. Property Valuation Report - Every property has a Property Valuation Report which is similar to an appraisal report that will show you three similar listings in the area.

1. Ledger - If the property is tenanted, the ledger will show all the financials related to rent, repairs, maintenance, late fees and security deposit. This is also included in the same packet as the Property valuation and inspection report.

1. Financial Analysis - You can analyze any property using the calculators they provide right under the "Analysis" tab on the listing

1. Recommended Property Management - At the bottom of the listing, there are 4 property management companies that Roofstock recommends. One of them is the current Property management that shows the Property Management Fee, Leasing fee, Renewal Fee and Maintenance fee and helps you compare with the other 3 property managements that Roofstock recommends.

1. Tenant Occupied - Since most of these properties are owned by investors, they are even sold with a tenant in place with rents at the market rate.

1. Referral Bonus - Earn $1000, Give $1000. Earn $1000 if the investor buys or sells a property with Roofstock. Your friend will also get $1000! This is one of the best parts of purchasing a property on Roofstock. If someone uses your referral link to create an account and buy or sell a property, you can get $1000 off your purchase or $1000 prepaid VISA card within minutes.

1. 30 Day Buy Back guarantee - If you are not happy after purchasing the property, you can sell it back to Roofstock within 30 days. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

There are many other advantages of Roofstock I might have missed but these are the 10 I felt really appealed to me when I was going through the purchase. 

[Alex Turan]

My two cents: I purchased one property (so far) through Roofstock. The inspection report, etc was already posted on the site for the property, making an offer was easy. The downsides I found was like someone above stated: the prices are way higher than the local comps and you as the buyer needs to follow through at each step. I usually “like” a property or portfolio to save it, then go to Zillow or another source to look up each address for comps or recent sales to get the real price before making an offer. My purchase through them was right at the start of the lockdowns in March so the appraisal was delayed. I had to work with the lender and seller to get the tenant to leave while the appraiser was there because of COVID fears. Roofstock did not step up in that regard. True that they delivered a property with a tenant in it and had a legit recent inspection report but I had to follow up on almost everything with the seller’s agent throughout the process as if I was representing myself. This included bouncing docs back to seller 3x because they kept signing seller disclosures that were blank. This was just fine with Roofstock but not by me. Finally, and this is not Roofstock related, I closed late April and because of the lockdowns, the title was not recorded until June, causing me to have to wait until July to get my first section 8 rent check from the city of St. Louis after, once again, following up several times on my own. Once the deal closed in April, Roofstock’s closing agent was done and out. Roofstock is good because they have properties with tenants and have a slick website to help with analysis, but be ready to work the escrow and closing details and don’t let them take the wheel without doing your own doc reviews, etc. I will use them again with the above caveat.