All Forum Posts by: Sara Malka

I don't think there's a substitute for having great, competent boots on the ground, but you'll also have to make time to visit every now and then yourself. We've done the long-distance thing, but we by far saw the most success with boots on the ground. I've found that Zestimates and the like can only take you so far. 

I assume you are talking about the investment class of a neighborhood/city/zipcode from a residential real estate investor's perspective. The market reflects this class in the $/sf of transactions that occur in that neighborhood/city/zipcode. For example, Beverly Hills (and all the zip codes in Beverly Hills) have a much higher $/sf than Reseda (and all the zip codes in Reseda). That's one major way to detect class, and you can detect it by looking at sold homes on RedFin and looking at the sale metrics.

Aside from $/sf, investment class is also derived from absorption, days on market, as well as demographic factors such as median income, age, educational attainment, and so on (demographics are much more speculative than market analysis metrics like $/sf, absorption, DOM, etc).

I made my own tool to track these residential market analysis metrics for me, but since I only work in CA they are strictly for the Los Angeles/Ventura & San Francisco/Bay Area markets. You can use it for free, click my profile to pull up my post & guide on how to use my app. You can compare every city/zip in Los Angeles or San Francisco against one another, or you can drill down into a specific city/zip in LA or SF to pull detailed market metrics on just that city/zip. It's what I use to achieve your stated goal.

Agents will be your best bet. 

City data

Local news outlets

Other investors

I would love to hear about where people syndicate their data from for neighborhoods.

 It does not exist, not with any accuracy that is. 

You need a GC Partner, that is very literally the only way. With time you can build you own personal estimation tool based of experienced costs. 

Thing is there is not a singular universal price per item/scope. It's like saying how much to get an automobile painted, well what kind of automobile, what finish level, what prep work, it will vary case by case and shop by shop. 

If you looking for a way to do things hands off from a million miles away virtually, it's via GC partnership, that's it. OR get ready to accept a lot of variance from projected and realized, it will simply never be accurate. 

@Sara Malka check out link in my signature for some helpful articles, including estimating rehab costs. My partner @Dan White has a remodeling background and wrote a very in-depth article on this and how to approach it. We've flipped 14 homes in the last few years in a competitive market, so we are writing from an investor's standpoint.  

Also, I'd highly recommend not using the 70% rule as it is inaccurate and will lead to your offers not being competitive. I'd take the time to learn how to evaluate a potential rehab and you'll be in a way better position than most wholesalers and flippers who use this lazy approach. Best of luck!