All Forum Posts by: Leighann Davis

Hello all,

To give you a little context for my question: I'm currently looking for my first deal that I hope to be a buy and hold rental. There's a certain area that I'm really interested in so I've been trying to look into a lot of information on the area and on the houses. One thing I wanted to do is see if there were other people/companies in the area that own a handful of properties that indicate that there are other investors in the area (not that that would make or break my decision in any way... just curious about the environment and maybe people I need to get to know). 

So basically I typed in the street names for the neighborhood I'm looking at, and copied all the info into an excel spreadsheet (Address, Parcel ID, Owner Name, Last Sale). I did some conditional formatting to show if there were any duplicate names (indicating that that person may own more than one property). 

That worked.....

But what I also found was certain addresses with '0' as the address number... with multiple parcel IDs and multiple owners. So for example the one I'm looking at now is like 0 ABC Street. Is shows that there are 19 different parcel IDs for this 0 ABC Street, 9 of which are owned by the same person and the rest are owned by other people. How does that work? I assume this is a piece of land that was parceled off (is that a term?) and sold and is now owned by several individuals... and because it hasn't been developed or built on yet they haven't been assigned addresses. However, more knowledable insight would be great. 

As a follow up question, is there a way to find out whether those are in the process of being developed or just sitting there (aside from contacting the owners of the property directly)??? I searched through a county permit website with a couple of the parcel IDs and there were no results. So I assume they're just sitting on those lots?

Thanks!

Leighann 

Thank you so much for this info @Eric H.! I don't have access to MLS yet but I downloaded redfin!

@Gavin Welch thank you! Hopefully I'll run into you around town one day. I'd love to chat more. 

@Adrian Smude thanks! That definitely makes sense. I keep hearing over and over again that it's what you buy it at that really determines whether it's a deal or not. 

Hello! I'm a new member to BiggerPockets and pretty new to real estate as well. I graduated college a few years ago and I am a CPA by trade, but I plan on pursuing some real estate investing (probably via buy-and-hold/rental property at least to start) in the near future. Just for reference, I'm in Lakeland, Florida (between Tampa and Orlando).

(I apologize in advance if there is already a forum on this, but I didn't see this topic when I did a quick search.)

I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight as to the resources they use to track real estate trends (national or local). I have a financial planning/investments background so I'm familiar with economic reports released by the Commerce Department with data on GDP,  inflation, existing home sales, new home sales, housing starts, etc. And it looks like Realtor.com puts out a National Real Estate Market Outlook (as I assume others do annually as well). But I'm wondering what other resources are out there that others are using and at what frequency. 

As it relates to local, of course I understand that each market can vary drastically and that the only way I will be able to get an understanding of my market is to dive in and be in the market. But I'm still curious as to whether anyone has a source they use for local (state, county, city) data (aside from local REIA meetings which I am attending).

I have about 5 real estate books I'm going through right now trying to learn as much as I can about investing and other specifics but I'd like to try to gain familiarity with the market as a whole as well. 

Thanks!

Leighann