All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Cope

@Rocky V. 

Putting one's money where their mouth is always the scariest test. 

There are times I am still surprised that I assume these risks. 

But I take strength from the preparation, education and past success. 

Nonetheless, I found myself unsettled just yesterday when I was considering a new neighborhood. 

Good luck. 

Thank you for sharing,

Jonathan

@Ibrahim Hughes 

Your second act of courage gave me chills. 

The crisis was no fun to face. 

We moved house during the crisis, into an unfinished flip, to make that time successful. 

May we all not need such courage again for a long time, if ever. 

Congrats to you on persevering. 

Thank you,

Jonathan

@Mary B. 

Thank you for sharing your view. 

Putting it all into action really does take courage. 

But I find that the action through courage also builds strength and character. 

The next scary moment seems more doable having had the courage once before. 

Thank you again,

Jonathan

@Joe Villeneuve 

That is bravery. :-)

I suspect that moment also helped you refine your approach carefully. 

My wife often serves as my most thoughtful concept critic. 

Thank you,

Jonathan

I recently wrote a blog post about the start of our real estate investing. 

Recalling how scared I was when we began made me wonder about stories of courage. 

I think we were most courageous when we started. 

Knowing the math was only sort of right and that we were only sort of prepared. 

What was your most courageous moment as a real estate investor?

Thank you in advance,

Jonathan

@Scott Dixon 

Tableau hosts user summits. 

They should have a listing of them available for 2015. 

Usually the content covers new product functionality and user case studies. 

We go to them to recruit and meet other like-minded users. 

My sense is that a business like ListSource could be made from a well organized RE data visualization platform. 

@Scott Dixon 

I suspect that if you ask Tableau sales they'll be able to point you at publicly available DBs of relevant content. I've seen them do demos using content from something like Zillow. 

@Sean T. 

It was the Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit

Was 12 and 13 November

@Joel Adams 

You'll know yourself best. 

And this is a time to be honest with yourself. 

Are you disciplined? 

Do you follow through? 

Are you an organized problem solver?

If you answered yes to all three then you can buy property where you wish. 

It will be best to buy where your knowledge of the place gives you an advantage. 

We own property away from where we now live. 

But our knowledge from ten years there makes management today simple. 

We can get almost anything done by email or phone by leveraging our knowledge of the place and our network. 

Real estate is a slow game. 

If you set it up like a system, and tend to the system, it will treat you well in most cases. 

We are 15 years in and we've been treated well to date. 

Consider a house hack where you are. 

Use your funds to put a roof over your head that you also rent room shares in. 

If not, think about a small multi-family where tenants pay for your living expenses. 

The purchase math will tell you whether you need to save more or have enough equity. 

An FHA loan with a low required down payment will get you far with little to put down.

Don't gamble. Just set up a disciplined approach that will work well long-term. 

Good luck,

Jonathan

@Scott Dixon 

A few folks I work with have been using Tableau to map crime data and policing levels with housing values. A UK data set in this instance. 

We use data visualization to optimize business performance as a function of our day job. 

I believe that Tableau's user communities have a range of relevant examples available. 

A few of us recently visited a business intelligence conference focused on predictive uses of data visualization that was hosted in Chicago. 

Cities were using the tools to map patterns of landlord violations and permitting concerns.