Visualizing data on comparables?

Question

My wife and I just closed on our first home, which is a duplex in the San Antonio area. We'll be househacking and renting out the other side for about a year to satisfy the terms of our mortgage.

In about one year, we intend to make our second real estate purchase, which will be a more permanent home for us. I doubt we will buy off the MLS but I am trying to find a good way to visualize MLS data so that I can plan our next purchase and get a "steal" that I will have instant equity or rehab for equity with the goal of getting a decent HELOC going.

Because real estate values are so location based, it is hard for me to process the data on a spreadsheet, because I'm constantly trying to project it onto a map in mind.

To know if what I'm looking at is a deal, I would like to be able to see $/sq.ft. data visualized on a map with either current listings or preferably sold properties. Even better, I would like to make it into a heat map with blue pins being lower numbers and red pins being higher numbers.

My questions to you all:

• Does anything like this exist? I would happily pay for the service.
• Is there anything similar out there that might be almost as good or even better?
• How do you immerse yourself in the data?

Thanks!

Spenser Murphy · Answer

What you are looking for is a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform. GIS is software for mapping data. It does exactly what you are asking for. You join the spreadsheet (table) to a geometry (property boundary, blocks, etc), then you visualize the data with a logical color scheme. Green for low and red for high property values. Here's a crude map showing property value by parcel area South of Ft Sam Houston. I'm not sure if this DropBox link will work. If you're interested, I can provide some free help. I do this for a living.

Property Value Map

Andy H. · Answer

Assuming you have the MLS data you are interested in mapping (which you'd have to get from someone who has MLS access if you don't since you want sold prices and Texas is a non-disclosure state), you could create your own map using batchgeo.com.

The website takes a spreadsheet as input and produces a map with pins on it. Clicking on a particular pin pops up all the data you have entered for that address. Columns in your spreadsheet have to include address, city, state, and zip. Then you add columns for whatever else you are interested in, eg. list price, sold price, beds, baths, sq ft, etc. To produce a heat map type effect, add a column in your spreadsheet called "group" and assign an appropriate value for each address. When you generate the map, all items with the same group value will have the same pin color. For example, you could use sold price/sq ft as your "group" and designate "<$50/sq ft" as one group, "$50-70/sq ft" as another group, etc. Any house that sold for less than $50/sq ft, put "<$50/sq ft" in the cell in the group column in your spreadsheet, etc  All those houses will show up as the same color pins on the map.

Tim Macy · Answer

I would recommend you focus on a couple neighborhoods that you would like to live in; and familiarize yourself with that market.  Some may tell you that you can systematize anything, but the problem is, every individual home is different (even the newer cookie cutter neighborhoods).

Focus on two or three neighborhoods and know what a good deal looks like in those pockets.

I would also temper your expectations as far as finding a lot of equity on MLS.  This is a competitive sellers market at the moment with a lot of players working the MLS, you can get some nice base hits here and there, but I don't know of anyone that's hit a homerun buying on the market lately.

If you are good with your numbers, you're already ahead of the game.  The problem is, you can't put the unique challenges that each single family home has on a spread sheet.  You can set some alerts and presets that will send you houses, but you have to be able to look at them and know if its a deal or not.

Just my two cents!

Tom V. · Answer

@Nathan Seltzer

Trulia has a heat map feature similar to what you're describing.

http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/

Probably not a good idea to depend on their data, but you could compare their heat maps to some of your own data and see how accurate it might be for your particular area.

John Vo · Answer

It sounds like you're trying to identify which area is "hot" based on sales volumes and price. Your local MLS already have this data and send a monthly update to all their member. The data specifically identify trends based on sales volumes and prices. I get these data through a partner that's a real estate agent so I know what you're talking about. I use the data to target specific area and then send out direct mail those area. I would suggest partnering up with a knowledgeable real estate agent to get access to the data. If you don't know a realtor at the moment, San Antonio's Association of Realtor is nice enough to share their data to the general public through their website:

http://realestate.sabor.com/pages/mlsstats

This is a little bit more labor intensive since you have to input the zipcode and it'll spit out the MLS data, but you can use this data to create your heat map. Hope this helps.

Tim Macy · Answer

@Nathan Seltzer I misread your original post.

I've seen this done by some larger institutional buyers.  They've gone as far as writing algorithms that pull data points like crime rates, age, median income, number of coffee shops and hundreds of others to create heat maps of where to buy.  It is all very interesting, but I haven't seen it create astounding returns.

The only reason I recommend focusing on a couple neighborhoods, is because house hacking entails buying in a neighborhood you want to live in.  There are a couple of small areas I look in to house hack myself, but because I'm going to live there, I've really narrowed it down.

Keep us updated!  I'm interested in seeing how it goes.

Mike Garland · Answer

I agree with Tim, this idea sounds like a nice hobby but as fast as the market is moving here in SA, the data will become obsolete pretty quick imo.

Ask yourself is this the best use of your time and resources?

Spenser Murphy · Answer

That's the Bexar Appraisal data set. Their data isn't the highest quality. They just want to know who to send the tax bill to. Can you get MLS data? Organizations can be very possessive with their data. Some will sell it to you.

You might have to manually drop points on a sold property then join it to your spreadsheet. How many properties are in your spreadsheet? I learned patience in grad school by manually creating data sets for professors. Sometimes that's what it takes. The map quality is only as good as your data. "Garbage in, garbage out." If you send me your data, I could look at it. There are free GIS suites like Quantum GIS. Youtube has plenty of tutorials.

Visualizing data on comparables?

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