Research Efficiency Tips?

[Tyrone Jackson]

I am a new investor ready to get my hands dirty, learn real estate, partner with experienced investors and start making deals happen one at a time. But one thing I am somewhat struggling with is making the most efficient use of my time.  I am a Finance Professional and I live in spreadsheets and have already set up a few to create a data set for the local farm area I am analyzing but I am embarrassed to say that I have just been painstakingly typing all the details from a property into my spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet for sold properties (source: realtor.com) and one for current Bank REOs  in the area (source: multiple websites) to try to get a feel for the spread in the market. But I can only transcribe so much data at a time and I don't want to spend so much time on a task that's worth $5 per hour.

Any ideas? Is there any service I can subscribe to? Do I need a real estate agent who can just send me data files that I can manipulate?