Real estate investing can be an ideal way of making money. However, it needs a lot of efforts to know how to start the investment and most importantly, how to follow up on it. Managing the whole process and doing all the required calculations sounds like impossible missions without the help of market analysis tools. As a result, choosing the best market analysis tools is a crucial factor for any expert real estate investor. In this article, we will explore the most important market analysis tools for real estate investors.
Getting the basics
You can’t simply start real estate investing without having a sufficient amount of knowledge about the basics of real estate investments. And you can’t have this information without reading or hearing from credible sources about real estate investing. There are several market analysis tools that offer you some basics about real estate investing. One good example is the online network BiggerPockets, where you can find a lot of courses for beginner real estate investors. Additionally, you can find books, success stories, and blogs entries, and you can ask questions and receive answers about real estate from experts. BiggerPockets offers opportunities for social networking with real estate investors as well.
Another useful tool is Investopedia, which is one of the biggest financial educational websites which is run by a team of scientists and experts. It offers real estate investors a huge amount of real estate articles and tutorials which are very helpful for beginners and experts.
Of course, you should also go though Mashvisor’s blog section, where you will find information about and advice on any possible aspect of real estate investing.
Searching for the ideal investment property
After you master the basics of real estate investing, the next step is to search for your investment property. Searching isn’t a piece of cake, and you can’t simply choose any random investment property and expect to make money out of it. There are plenty of real estate market analysis tools to search for an investment property, and the process of choosing the best one of them can be confusing. So, we decided to help you and tell you about Mashvisor analysis tool. To begin with, Mashvisor can help you search either a city or a neighborhood in the US. At the city level, it shows you the neighborhoods and the number of investment properties within each one of them, while the neighborhood level shows you very specific data about the real estate investments in this neighborhood.
After choosing the neighborhood, the magic begins. Mashvisor is designed in a way to show you in detail all the rental properties and their figures in this neighborhood in minutes. It also offers you a lot of tools and features to specify and personalize your search according to age, type, budget, cap rate, cash on cash return, and many other criteria you choose.
Finally, when you get a small number of favorable choices, Mashvisor helps you again compare these choices. You can click on one of them to get a new page full of data related to this certain property, its calculations, and conditions which will help compare different investment properties.
Additionally, Mashvisor allows you to compare Airbnb and traditional rentals to decide which one is more effective to follow regarding a certain real estate property.
Related: Real Estate Investing: Traditional vs. Airbnb Investments
One of the other useful market analysis tools is Propertyradar. It’s a small-business oriented tool that offers data about properties and analyzes them for real estate investors. It helps real estate investors organize the process of investing and allows them to track foreclosures.
Networking
It’s true that the most crucial factor regarding your success in real estate investing is how you manage the process, but still sometimes people you know can help in the management. Having a network of real estate investors who can support and offer their expertise for beginners is very essential. They have skills regarding choosing the best investment properties, tenants, selling rental properties, etc. There are several market analysis tools that help you join such networks like BiggerPockets and Houzz. Houzz is basically a platform that joins home professionals and owners together for the purpose of house modeling and design. It is a very useful tool for real estate investors, especially while fixing investment properties in order to sell them. This network lets real estate investors them meet a professional and get his/her help.
There are other chances for meeting real estate investors through real estate investor associations (REIA). You can find them by searching online to join their meetings and events in which you learn from their experience and hear about new opportunities.
Related: How to Build and Maintain a Real Estate Investment Network
Tenants screening
How is a real estate investor supposed to know who is qualified to rent a property or not? Who will pay the rent on time or keep the rental property in a good condition? Sounds like an impossible mission? Not really. There are market analysis tools that can run credit reports and give a background report on tenants. Having an effective tool for screening tenants is a key point for the real estate investor to consider. After having several rental properties, the real estate investor should have an easy and quick way to choose between tenants.
Smart Move is a paperless tool that can offer real estate investors screening reports in minutes, and, at the same time, it doesn’t violate the privacy of the tenants. MyRental is another online tenant screening tool that offers backgrounds on tenants who pay the rents on time, who protect the rental property, and who stay for long periods of time. If you own several real estate properties, then there are more comprehensive tools like Avail that help you find tenants, view credit history, sign leases, and collect rent — on any device, with tools built specifically for landlords.
Related: 8 Things That Make a Good Tenant
The bottom line
Success in real estate investing relies on several factors, and YOU are the most important one of them: first, by having the basics of real estate domain, and then by choosing the right market analysis tools. There are hundreds of real estate market analysis tools, but all you need is a few. In each stage of the investing process, you need certain types of these tools. Some of the market analysis tools can be helpful along the way since they have plenty of useful features for all stages of the real estate investment process, like Mashvisor.