All Forum Posts by: Mike Austin

I agree, but like you said, I need to be able to identify an area before there's a need for an agent. I feel the only way to do this is to do some research. The challenge is that I feel most investors are presently selecting regions of the country based on intuition and word of mouth. I feel like a data driven approach could be more effective.

It doesn't look like there are tools that will do this since MLS data seems only available locally (ridiculous!)...

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... 

@James Wise Just wanted to thank you for that great guide! There seems to be a lot of opportunity there!

Thanks for the replies! I'm going to go through that guide - thanks @James Wise! 

I'll reach out to a couple of the folks here. 

Hi all,

I am visiting Cleveland in a couple of weeks and wanted to see if anyone had time for lunch. I'd like to learn more about your market since I hear you all have some great cash flow out there. Also, any tips on making the most of a two day trip would be great!

Mike from Texas

Is there an easy way to model the peaks and valleys of profitability in the life of a property? I'd like to be able to say, xyz capex items are at this point in it's serviceable life, this is what my expenses could be in 5 years. It seems like that would be a valuable calculator to have in the community if one does not already exist. 

There's probably a term for this that I don't know about, but a capex profile for an investment that I plan to hold for 8 years will be different from one with a 30+ year horizon.

I think the point he's trying to make is just that there are no turnkey properties in Austin and it will take work. I would agree with that based on the few months I've looked around and feedback from other investors. I think there are still value add properties out there with lower than market rents that will work. You will have to update, and raise the rent to get the numbers to work but there are still opportunities out there.

I've been seeing hand written "Fixer Upper" all over the place. Things like "ARV" 349k on them. I thought it was funny and makes me think there have to be a lot of novice investors in the area for someone to be trying that...

I don't know of any but I'd be interested in participating if there's anyone who'd like to put together a BP meeting. 

@Ben Leybovich Oh, please! It's a very popular self-help pamphlet. I'm happy it's brought you a lot of success but try not to be so condescending.