Anyone who is making money in real estate knows that success in this industry starts with the right income property. Find a real estate investment property for sale from which you can expect a good ROI and you’re good to go. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. This is especially true if you’re investing in the massive US housing market where there are millions of houses to choose from and the competition is only growing. How can you find an investment property for sale and be 100% sure that it’s a good deal before anyone else finds it? The answer is to use real estate investor websites and tools. But not just any website – we’re talking about Mashvisor.
Mashvisor is a real estate analytics platform developed to make property investors’ lives easier and their decision-making process more efficient. It does so by providing a number of tools for real estate investors that use big data and predictive analytics. Using these tools, you can say goodbye to wasting time when researching a real estate market, analyzing dozens of potential rental properties, and collecting/verifying data for each one. Mashvisor is also different from other home search sites in that it provides such data for both traditional and Airbnb rentals! So, you can use our tools to find a real estate investment property for sale to rent out either as a long-term or short-term vacation rental.
Here are the main property search features and investment tools that Mashvisor provides for a real estate investor today:
#1. Find Areas That Match Your Criteria Using the Heatmap
Successful real estate investors are aware that the best homes for sale are found in top locations. Hence, before you even start your rental property search, you need to make sure that you’re buying in the right area. Of course, different property investors have different criteria for what they look for in an investment location. Overall, however, you can find the best places to invest in real estate today by analyzing certain metrics such as home prices, rent prices, vacancies, and the return on investment.
As you can imagine, it’ll take a lot of time and effort to find such data for every housing market that you’re interested in to buy a house for investment. That is, of course, if you’re not using the Real Estate Heatmap. At first, it looks like a map that shows you real estate investment properties for sale available in your city of choice and in which neighborhoods. However, you can explore data for each area to see if it fits your search criteria – and that’s when you activate the Heatmap Analysis feature.
Simply click on the metric by which you want to analyze a location and the Heatmap will be highlighted. Mashvisor highlights neighborhoods that have the best performance of the selected metric in green, while areas with low performance in red. Basically, you’ll be able to analyze any neighborhood nationwide in just a few seconds and identify a profitable one where you should focus your search for a real estate investment property for sale. You can highlight the map based on:
- Listing Price
- Airbnb Cash on Cash Return
- Traditional Cash on Cash Return
- Airbnb Rental Income
- Traditional Rental Income
- Airbnb Occupancy Rate
#2. Find Profitable Income Properties Using the Property Finder
Want to find the top-performing real estate investment property for sale in your market of choice without having to go through any analysis? The next real estate investment tool Mashvisor provides allows you to do just that in a matter of minutes. We’re talking about the Rental Property Finder. This tool makes use of a wide range of real estate comps, analytics, and return on investment metrics and utilizes the latest machine-learning algorithms. In turn, it provides real estate investors with lists of investment properties that best match their personal criteria AND have a high potential for profits.
The Property Finder also comes with a number of filters that allow you to filter out any unwanted property and only keep the ones that you’re confident about for real estate investing. This tool is great for investors who are trying to find a rental investment property for sale in a market that they’re not familiar with. You don’t have to spend time researching and studying real estate market trends before you start looking for rental properties for sale. Instead, set the filters to match your criteria and immediately start searching for the best real estate investment property for sale. These filters include:
- City: find real estate for sale in up to 5 cities simultaneously
- Miles: the distance that you’d like the property to be from the city
- Budget
- Rental Strategy: traditional or Airbnb
- Type of Property: single-family, multi-family, condo, and others
- Number of Bedrooms
- Number of Bathrooms
Create a FREE Mashvisor account now to give the Property Finder a try!
#3. Find Off Market Homes for Sale Using the Property Marketplace
Savvy property investors understand that buying off market homes can be one of the best real estate investments you can make. These are typically cheap homes for sale that can be very profitable either as rental properties or fix-and-flip projects. Knowing where and how to find an off market real estate investment property for sale, however, is the tricky part. Of course, Mashvisor wouldn’t be the #1 tool for real estate investors right now if it didn’t solve this problem!
Aside from finding publically listed homes for sale in the US housing market, Mashvisor also allows you to find off market deals by searching in the Property Marketplace. Here, real estate investors will find a vast supply of non-MLS, off market properties including foreclosures, bank-owned, short sales, and auctioned homes. You can sort and narrow down listings by zip code, town, and city as well as use filters like budget, rental strategy (traditional or Airbnb), number of bathrooms and bedrooms.
What’s more, you can also use our Investment Property Calculator (our next investment tool), to analyze these off market real estate properties. That way, you won’t only be able to find cheap homes for sale in your location of choice, but also make sure that they are actually profitable real estate investments using data and predictive analytics. Visit the Mashvisor Property Marketplace today and find the off market property you’ve been searching for!
#4. Analyze Properties Using the Investment Property Calculator
Say you’ve found a real estate investment property for sale in a market that you’re interested in. What’s the next step? Before jumping in and making an offer on a house, smart investors take a closer look at the numbers behind the real estate deal. After all, real estate investing is a numbers game – you need to make sure that the numbers make sense before investing your money in an income property. This is also known as running an investment property analysis. But where can you get reliable real estate data and numbers in the first place?
You can do your own research and due diligence, but you don’t want to waste time and end up losing to another investor who was eyeing the same house for sale. For this reason, the tool that you need now is the Investment Property Calculator. Instead of creating spreadsheets for each property you analyze, use this tool to calculate your finances, fine-tune your costs, and view readily calculated returns. Besides giving you pre-calculated real estate data for costs like interest rate, property tax, and maintenance, Mashvisor’s Rental Property Calculator also lets you enter your own numbers.
Moreover, what makes Mashvisor different from other real estate investor websites is that it gives you a comprehensive rental strategy comparison. When using our Investment Property Calculator, you’ll get to see how the real estate investment property for sale is expected to perform as a traditional vs. an Airbnb rental. You’ll easily decide which rental strategy is more lucrative for a particular property in terms of the cap rate, cash on cash return, rental income, cash flow, and Airbnb occupancy rate. For those analyzing Airbnb rentals, this tool is also known as the Airbnb Profitability Calculator.
That’s not all that this investment tool can do! By clicking on the Valuation Analysis, property investors can view nearby traditional and Airbnb listings and see how similar they are to their subject property. In other words, it shows you a list of rental comps. Comparing the property to similar ones in the area allows you to find its true market value and know if it’s listed at a fair price. Plus, real estate comps help you determine how much to offer on the house and how much to charge for rent after buying it.
The Bottom Line
Finding a real estate investment property for sale is not so hard if you’re using Mashvisor! Whether you’re looking to buy your first rental property or to grow your real estate investment portfolio, Mashvisor has something to offer to help you out. Make sure to add our tools to your toolbox to start making smarter and faster investment decisions. Want to test them out first?
To get access to our real estate investment tools, click here to sign up for a 7-day free trial of Mashvisor today and enjoy 15% off for life.