RE Investment Research Workflow

[Mike Austin]

I am not a sophisticated investor and am interested in learning more about the workflows that other people have for finding potential investments. There doesn't seem to be a best of breed platform for the average investor to use. I find myself bouncing from tool to tool to assess properties. I apologize if this has been discussed many times before but what does your process look like and what tools do you use?

What i'm doing now that is time inefficient and not as effective as it could be:

1. MLS/Zillow
2. Rentometer.com
3. NeighborhoodScout.com for Crime & Schools
4. BP Rental analysis tool
5. ... Tax Appraisal Website, Google population trends, 

I pay for the premium services on most of the tools I use and am willing to invest some money for a better process. Is there a way to set more precise investment criteria and receive notifications for possible opportunities? I feel like i should not have to manually curate a list of possible investments. Software should do this in a more advanced way.

Example advanced criteria: 

1.  Zip code rental rates/price point = .9-1%+
2. School rating minimums
3. Meets acceptable crime rate
4. ... Property tax, population trends, unemployment, etc, etc

I assume more sophisticated investors have automated tools like these, and I will have to build the software integrations myself, but maybe i'm just not aware of the tools that do this. Is there a better way? 

I would like to be able to apply the process to properties anywhere in the US and receive possible opportunities from across the country. I'm currently going off word of mouth and "intuition" for areas to investigate, ie: Memphis, Dallas, Jacksonville, etc... 

[Alaska Wagoner]

Hi Mike, I've been in a similar boat for the past year and a half or so, but I am finally making some faster progress.  I'm not a sophisticated investor either, but I thought I'd at least share the changes I've made that have been helpful.

Like you, I keep hearing that a particular place is great and then getting excited about it until I find a particular element (schools, anticipated appreciation/depreciation, job growth, all the things you mentioned) and I chicken out and start over with a new place.  Like you, I realized I had to put an end to it, so here is what I did. 

1) I decided to be OK with the fact that no place will be perfect.

2) I decided to be OK with the fact that my first deal might not be my best deal, and might even be an expensive LEARNING OPPORTUNITY. My mother is a surgeon, no one dies in real estate ;)

3) I set parameters based on my goals.  Full disclosure I am still tweaking this, but I'm looking to own 25-50 doors, with 200+ in cash flow per month, of residential property.  

4) I decided to be OK with owning property in different parts of the country.  This will allow me to feel out different markets, and if one has crazy flooding or some such, it could theoretically pay off to diversify in this way. 

5) Memphis seemed to have good cash flow, so I decided to start there.  I contacted a realtor, talked to her about my goals and requested to be put on an auto mailing list.

6) I created an excel document that I printed out and have tasks to complete every day (including running daily deal analysis!) so that I am taking steps. 

In short, Memphis has good cash flow (excellent); It has meh schools (so be it); It has St. Jude's Children's Hospital and FedEx HQs, both of which were expanded recently (excellent); The crime can be spotty even within a neighborhood, zipcode or street (that's how it is); Appreciation might be slow, or non existent (fine, not betting on appreciation). Basically, I don't know that Memphis is the BEST place, but if I'm planning on taking 25-50 cracks at it, it seems good enough and I was tired of not getting started. 

What is your reason for getting into real estate investing?  

Best of Luck!