Market value

[Vanessa Burgess]

On the tax assessor website the chart that saids market value are those numbers really true market value of the area?

[Hattie Dizmond]

@Vanessa Burgess 

The market value of a property, regardless of what method you use to determine that value, has very little to do with its suitability for investing. 

For example, if you are a buy & hold investor and decided to target the Brentfield Elementary area of Richardson, Texas, you would NOT find it a good market for investing, even though property values have appreciated almost 30% this year over 2014. Why? Because market rents haven't even started to catch up with property values. You would be in a negative cash flow situation or, at the very least, in a very poor CAP situation.

You have to know your strategy. Are you buy & hold? Fix & flip? Wholesale? Etc.? Do you need to be specific with regard to the price point you can manage? Are you going to look at only SFR or will you also look at small MF? Townhouses? Condos?

Once you have defined your strategy and criteria, then you can pick 2 or 3 areas to really focus on.  You can use readily available demographic information to figure out who lives there.  Once you know that, it will be much easier to determine how to reach them.