All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Hey Maria,

Meetup is a cool app that I've used to find some local REI groups. Here's a list of some that I've come across in MPLS:

• BP Bi-Monthly Meetup
• Future Millionaire Real Estate Investor Club
• Millennial Investors Focus Group
• Twin Cities Real Estate Investors (TCREI)

@Todd Dexheimer Do you think having a +/-20% range of the Zestimate on a spreadsheet like this be useful as a general guide? I.e. if a property Zestimate is $100,000 have it listed as $80,000 - $120,000. 

Also, have you found the Rent Zestimate to be accurate? I feel like that one would be a bit better.

Thanks for the comments everyone! To clarify upfront, I wouldn't be selling this or anything like that. Just thought I could kill two birds with one stone by saving myself some time when analyzing deals, and also beefing up my resume. I've also heard from a lot of other people that the Zestimate can be pretty far off sometimes, but for the rental prices I found this handy page (https://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageRentZesti...) from Zillow that gives their own analysis on the Zestimate accuracy for a given city. I'm in Minneapolis, so it looks pretty good for the rental Zestimate at least.

@Senthil N. If you have any of your code on GitHub I'd love to check it out! I don't have direct access to the MLS, so I've just been receiving a daily list of multi-families in my target market. Part of my logic for the project is that MLS is just a listing service, while Zillow is primarily an analysis tool - which leads me to think that there will be better insight available on Zillow. The MLS also does not have an API, so there isn't a way to automate the analysis like you can do with Zillow. But, like you mentioned a more experienced investor might have such a finely tuned MLS search that all of this is unnecessary. Could you see a spreadsheet like I mentioned being useful for any non-newbies?

@Kevin Powell Lot of great ideas! The Google Maps idea would be really cool and I've wanted to try using their API for a while now. It would probably take a while for me to actually save time in the long run by creating this, especially in Mpls, but I thought it would be cool if I could make it user-friendly enough for other people to use. I'm not sure what extra info Zillow has vs the MLS, but the MLS doesn't have any API's so I don't think a project like this would even be possible.

@Todd Dexheimer Outside of inner-city listings have you found it to be somewhat accurate?

@John Woodrich I think most of the info is similar as well, but the catch is that Zillow has an interface that allows a script to get that data whereas the MLS doesn't. A more experienced investor maybe wouldn't need this because their MLS search criteria is so finely tuned, but if someone is looking at a wider market, they could just take all of the addresses that are returned in their search and then pass it to this script.

Hi folks,

I'm not sure how common this is, but as I've been searching for my first house-hack in Minneapolis, MN, I've been taking all of the relevant MLS listings that are forwarded to me each day and then pasting the address into Zillow to view things like the Zestimate, # bed/bath, property taxes, comps, etc.

As a computer science student, after a few weeks I started to think there might be an easier way to do this and began to look at Zillow's API. This tool would allow me to take a list of addresses and automatically create a spreadsheet that, for every address, would contain every piece of information Zillow has available on it. This means that instead of manually copying and pasting all of these addresses and then clicking through Zillow's site, I could just have a script run every day that automatically takes the list of addresses and gives me a spreadsheet that gathers all of this info and does analysis on the numbers.

So my question is, does that seem like a tool that would be useful to the community? If so, what sort of information from Zillow would be useful to include in the spreadsheet? 

Thanks in advance!

@Brian Pulaski I also don't have MLS access but have been set up with a daily email subscription of properties that fit my criteria. So I've been looking at any interesting properties from that list on Zillow to get more info.

Hi folks,

Wondering what everyone's thoughts are on using Zillow, Redfin, etc. as a primary tool when estimating a property's value. I've heard that the Zestimate and other things can often be a bit inaccurate, but overall it seems like Zillow is a pretty excellent one-stop shop to find out the majority of what you need to know about a property - comps, property taxes, previous sale prices, etc. Basically, enough to find out if it's worth further investigation. 

To me, it seems like a reasonable strategy to use the MLS to get quicker leads on a property and then just check out the address on Zillow to get an idea if it's a good deal.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Hey @Andrew Smith , thanks for the reply! I don't have any specific property in mind at the moment, but I'll keep your contact info on hand once I do! 

The bit about tariffs is another interesting component that I wasn't aware of as well. I think with the current administration, that's certainly within the realm of possibility.

It sounded like they were planning on making the hosting websites (Airbnb, etc.) pay a $5,000/year licensing fee. No mention of the fees passed on to the actual hosts though. 

Anyone able to find a link to the full text of the proposed ordinance?

Hi folks,

Just a question I've been looking into a bit and wondering if any other Minneapolis investors have considered. I understand that the price/efficiency of solar panels is trending on an exponential curve, but the amount of government subsidies also follows the same trend (dropping in total subsidy amounts), so I think from a timing perspective it's a good buy - not sure about how fast the payoff period would be for somewhere in Minneapolis though.

Has anybody here decided to purchase solar panels for a property and been satisfied with the returns?

Thank you all for the useful advice! These are all great ways to get a quick back-of-the-napkin estimate which is just what I was looking for.