driving around helps you understand your area and the types of properties that are there.
while riding around, do this for each house of interest to you
1. Write down the address. then go home and:
2. Do a Google search to get as much info as possible for free on it
3. Find out the county that the property is in by doing a Google search for the zip code and the word county.
4. Based on the county that the property is in do another Google search for this term, “(name of county) tax assessor”. So if the house is in fulton county, It will be “fulton county tax assessor.”
5. Go to the tax assessor website and do a real estate tax records property search. This search will be based on the street address and city.
6. Print out the tax record and compare the property data to what you found on the tax assessor site. Expect slight differences due to changes that the owner may have forgotten to mention to the county, like room additions.
7. Take note of the following:
a. Bed rooms
b. Bath rooms
c. Square feet
d. Zoning.
e. Tax assessed value. Use this as the minimum estimated value
f. Annual taxes. Divide this by 12 to get the monthly tax bill
g. The price the current owner purchased it for.
h. The current owners name and mailing address.
i. The amount of the mortgage recorded against it and the recording date.
8. Go to
www.realtor.com and find the section in the middle of the home page labeled “WHAT'S YOUR HOME WORTH”. Plug in the property address to see what houses in the area (within ½ mile and the last sold within the last 12 months) are selling for. Sort the list by most recent sales. This will assist you in estimating property values. Don’t forget to print out the page.
9. Select the five most recently sold properties within ½ mile of the house you selected for comparisons. If the prices seem really low when compared to the rest of the list, ignore them as they probably were bank foreclosures, and select some higher valued ones (confirm this by looking at sellers name on tax assessor site).
10. Go back to the home page of
www.realtor.com and plug in the address again in to the Find Homes block. The results will list the asking prices of all homes in the area that are listed for sale. when the results come up filter them by showing only single family homes (if that’s what you ‘re comparing) and the minimum number of bedrooms and bath rooms desired by the assumed investor. Select 3 of the best looking houses (must all be in move in ready condition) for comparison and print out the listings.
11. For steps 9 and 10 above make sure that the square footage is within 25% of the square footage of the property and has the same number of bedrooms and baths. Also confirm that the houses are of the same style and construction as the one selected for research (if the one selected is a two story brick house, then it must be compared against brick houses). You’ll also need to confirm that the houses were built within 7 years of each other and have tax assessed values that no more than 25% higher or lower than the selected house, by using the tax assessor’s site for data on the compared houses.
12. Record as much of the information that you can about the house you selected on a property inspection form or note pad. Enter the following in the form for the seller:
a. Seller’s name – John Smith
b. Phone 770-555-3333
c. Total Mortgage balance $20,000
d. Total Monthly mortgage payment - $450
e. Why selling? – Moving out of state
f. No dead line to sell, nor is it going to foreclosure
g. Number to Realtor
h. Estimated After repair value - do the following:
i. Add up the sales prices of the houses you saw listed as recently sold on Realtor.com, the asking prices of the homes currently for sale on Realtor.com and the tax-assessed value of the property.
ii. Divide the sum by the number of houses to get an average estimated after repair value. Enter this number as the estimated value.
i. Multiply the estimated after repair value by 70%
j. make a note to self that recent sales as the method used to determine ARV
k. Enter the sellers estimated repair cost as zero
l. For your repair estimate use the results of your inspection, so leave blank until you actually go out to see it.
m. Enter the sellers asking price as the price listed on the site
n. For what would you offer enter the MAO formula results after you have inspected the property.
o. note the type of property
p. note the property condition only after you see it totally in person
q. note if it’s vacant or occupied
r. From the tax records or the wholesaler website enter the number of bedrooms, baths, square footage and stories.
From here you have the rough basis for finding a deal. You have selected a property, have recorded the basic info on it, found some other properties to compare it against and know many of the numbers needed to determine if it is a deal. Confirm your numbers with other sources of data and go forward.
The next step is to schedule about an hour to go see it.
