A systematic way to evaluate property conditions on site

[Alex Halimou]

I am relatively new to full time RE investing and started visiting properties in mass a few months ago. Quickly I realized that writing notes while checking out a house was not enough. After reading the excellent “BiggerPockets presents… The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs” by J. Scott, I got the idea to make a Google Form to encompass all the issues I need to be aware of when visiting a property. What I have, is still a work in progress and every time I use it, I get new ideas about improvements.

I am presenting it here so that other investors can use it or suggest improvements.

The following links to Google Forms and is a sample form.

Property Condition Assessment Form

If anyone is interested in a copy, please let me know.

My long term plan is to use the output of the evaluation form as input into my rental investment and flipping investment spreadsheets. Already I am developing a database with per unit costs for construction costs, so I can automate as much as possible when evaluating a property.

In a related theme, recently my son showed interest in real estate investing and I decided to make a variation of my form for training purposes. Basically every section of the training form has pictures of a property to be evaluated. I include a link to it here Evaluate Property #1. Try it to see if you come up with the same answers as others!

PS. I plan to expand on that subject in a separate post.