Hi everybody,
I have been lately searching some good property analysis tools, which I could use to save time when doing some screening and calculations for potential investments. I would say that I am an intermediate investor (owning 3 properties), so I know most of the various calculations and indicators. But it takes quite a bit of time to do it in excel for each property.
So I was wondering if other more experienced investors here are using some of the real estate analysis software. I have searched in google and found these 4 the most interesting.
www.rentalsoftware.com
www.ianalyzerei.com
www.reiwise.com
www.realestateanalysisfree.com
3 of these tools are paid and 1 is free, and I haven’t tried all of them - so it would be interesting if you guys have tried any of these and have some experience, and could share it with others. I guess it could be interesting for the other (and especially beginner) investors here. If you have tried any of the tools, please vote as well.
I am really interested in your experience!
I don’t use any software. I don’t have a fancy spreadsheet. I’ll tell you what I do.
Our business model is to have less than 30k in houses that rent for anywhere from $450-650. So the first thing I do to weed out properties is I don’t look at anything over 40k list. Those owners/banks are too far away to come down where I need to be.
The next thing I do is weed out properties by area. There are a couple areas of town I refuse to buy in no matter what the deal looks like.
Anything that looks interesting in our price range, I’ll go check out. Sometimes I can rule them out based on the surrounding area or they’re just simply too much work…especially for the asking price.
If I find something I’m interested in, I’ll have my Realtor show me. I take good notes about each property. I make note of what each property needs and approx how much it will cost to fix. I look at the surrounding houses too.
Now I have to see if the property will make me money. Our deals have all been 6.5% APR on 10 yr amortization. I figure my target acquisition price plus rehab cost to determine my payments. I know insurance will run approx $400/yr for these houses. I look at taxes. Generally they’re between $650-1100/yr.
I know from experience what each property will bring for rent.
Our loan payments will probably be about 1/2 or just under 1/2 of the rent. Keep in mind this is for 10 yrs.
On most of our deals, there’s about $150-200 left over each month after figuring mortgage/tax/insurance costs. That’s good enough for me considering they’ll be paid off in 10 yrs.
All this is based off experience now. I know how much I can get in rent as well as approx what my rehab costs will be. I don’t need to pay for a service to estimate things for me.
my hard money guy had a spreadsheet that compares hard money to conventional financing on a house based on price, repairs and ARV, it also lets you plus in the rent and shows cash flow.
I made some changes, added a few things, etc, now if I plug in price, rehab cost, interest rate on both hard money and conventional, points, closing cost for both closes, insurance, etc, it tells me how much cash I have to come up with, what the cash flow will be and what the unrealized capital gain is
But any spreadsheet is only as good as the data