- [Seth] Hello, everybody.
This is Seth from the REtipster blog.
Thanks a lot for checking in.
I want to take just a few minutes here and give you
a very quick overview on how I am able
to very quickly and effectively research properties
so that I know exactly what I'm buying,
and I don't have to actually drive up to the property
and see it myself, but I can get just the basic information
that I need in order to just put together an offer,
send it out there, and see if we can get an acceptance.
Now, the first thing that I always do,
in most cases, when we're getting in a lead
or call in from somebody,
most times it's coming in the form of a phone call,
and a lot of times people leave a voicemail.
People will just kind of give us the basic information
about who they are, what their property is,
and that's really all we need to get started.
As you can see here, this is my offer worksheet.
It's thorough, but it's not overly thorough,
and basically I can get all of the person's information.
I can get all the property information
and information about the surroundings,
enough so that I can actually make a offer
and just get the process started.
Now, usually, the first thing that I do
is I head over here to AgentPro 24/7,
and if you haven't heard of AgentPro, that's fine.
I hadn't heard of it either until a few years ago,
but it's actually a really, really cool tool.
I believe you can actually sign up for a free trial
if you wanna just give it shot.
So I'm just gonna quick sign in,
and I can just quick show you how we use this little tool
to show us exactly everything we need to know
about the property.
Okay, now, as you see, it basically just starts
by giving us an overview of the whole country.
Just to show you an example here
of how you would begin researching your property.
Let's say, for example, the person who is calling,
their name is John Smith.
And let's just, for instance, say that the property
is in Kern County, California.
Just type that in here, pops up.
I'm just gonna start by typing in the name Smith,
and let's see what that gives us.
There, now the first thing that we're gonna see
are, first of all, a bunch of these little red push pins
all over the place and then a big list of properties,
and this is basically every single registered person
in Kern County, California
that owns a property and their name is Smith.
Hey, what do you know, there's one right here, Smith, John.
So let's click on that and see what we can find out.
When we click on that,
it's going to pop up this little box here,
and what it's offering us here is a profile on the property,
all the basic information about it,
so I'm just gonna hit OK and see what it brings up,
and this is really what you end up seeing
when it pulls up this property report,
and this is just an example
that we generated from AgentPro
just to give you a feel for what it is.
Now, as you see, we're gonna scroll down here, and...
Let's see here.
This service is actually typically used
for real estate agents.
Those are the people,
like the biggest subscribers to this service,
but it's actually really valuable for people like you and me
who are actually just investors
because a lot of times we're gonna need to get
very fast, quick access to a lot of the same information
that real estate agents are gonna want.
And just to give you an example,
first thing we're gonna see here
is the name of the primary owner,
and we're gonna see, first of all, the mailing address
of where this person lives.
So you can see in this example the owner lives in Seattle,
but their property is in California,
so that tells us right away that this is an absentee owner.
They don't live at the property,
and those are typically the kind of properties
we're pursuing when we're buying investment properties.
We can see here the assessor's parcel number.
That's an important number to have.
Got the legal description.
That's important when you create your purchase agreement.
You'll want to copy and paste that in there,
and look at all this information we've got.
I find out how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms,
square footage of the property, the year it was built,
the size of the lot, the zoning,
really a lot of really important stuff that we need to know.
One of my favorite things about this is you can see
the most recent transfer date,
and you can see here that the last transfer date
was August 6, 2007,
and the transfer value is a lot money, 2,850,000.
The reason this is important and very helpful,
you can probably already figure it out.
A lot of times, when you're negotiating with sellers
who are trying to sell their property,
they're not gonna really show all their cards to you.
They're gonna give you a number,
or a lot of times you just have to
fish around for that number
and hope that you can get the right one,
but the interesting thing is,
in fact, I'm actually working on one this week
where I'm trying to buy a property from somebody,
and they're not really giving me any clear indication
of how low of a offer they're actually willing to accept,
but I can come here, and I actually found out
that their most recent transfer value,
the price that they paid for the property was $300.
Now that basically tells me I can make my offer
pretty stinking low and probably have them
still walk away with some money.
This is really important because if I know
how much they have into this property,
that tells me a lot about how low of an offer
they may or may not be willing to accept.
Now, this isn't always the whole story.
In fact, it usually isn't.
A lot of times there are things
that we just don't see or know
that aren't included in this information,
but it's a really good starting point just to figure out,
okay, where is this person kinda coming from,
how much do they think the property is worth,
how much did they invest in the property,
so that's just really good information to know.
As you scroll down this document,
you're also gonna find assessment and tax information.
This is just some helpful supplemental information to have.
You're also gonna see a parcel map here,
which is very helpful,
and I'm gonna show you more about that in just a second.
And another great thing is comparables in the area.
This basically outlines, based on your property statistics,
a lot of similar properties in the area
that have recently sold.
And, again, these are just examples,
but usually you'll see properties
sold in the past six months or so,
and you can get an idea for how much
would your property be worth.
How much is this property or ones like it?
What are they going for.
And then you've got the transaction history
for this property.
This is another pretty helpful thing
that I've always found really interesting
is to find out not only how much did the seller
pay for this property when they bought it
but how much did the previous buyers and sellers pay for it.
What historically has this property
been bought and sold for?
Just really get a lot of information on
the different prices that have been paid,
and this is really helpful, again, in figuring out
how much do you wanna pay for this property.
And then down here, we've also got foreclosure activity,
and this is fairly helpful to know
just if there's a lot of foreclosures in the area.
A lot of times that can affect your property's value as well
and you don't wanna be in a neighborhood
where everybody's going belly up on their mortgages,
so, again, this is good information to have.
And then, also, we've got information
on who the neighbors are on the property
and then demographics.
This stuff basically just shows you
some general information on the population.
Is the population growing?
Is this property in the path of growth?
Doesn't usually matter a ton, but it's not bad to know.
And keep in mind this is something
that real estate agents use,
and they print these off pretty regularly
and give them to their clients
when they are interested in buying these properties,
and you can do the same thing for your clients.
Once you buy a property and you're looking to sell it,
this is a great report that you can provide
just to give them all the information
and if it serves your purpose.
If it doesn't serve your purpose, then don't do it.
If it's something that's helpful, it's not bad to have.
And with AgentPro, when you do the cheapest plan,
I believe you can pull 50 of these per month,
so that's pretty generous.
Most people aren't buying that many per month any way,
but you can really get a lot of this information
just as part of the normal paid subscription.
So now that we've got that,
I'm gonna show you how you can use this information
to just really quickly evaluate your property
and figure out whether or not you wanna make an offer,
and if so, how much to make an offer for.
Now, usually, most of this stuff,
owner's name, phone, email, that kind of thing,
you're gonna get when somebody leaves you a voicemail
or when you talk to them on the phone or if they email you.
Mailing address, city, state, zip,
that's all in the property profile report.
Again, that's right here.
So you just enter that stuff in.
The property street address, same kind of thing.
It's right here, so you plug that into this thing here.
And then property characteristics, some of this stuff
you're gonna be able to find out pretty easily.
Sometimes you'll just have to ask specifically for it.
And the size, that stuff is all in the profile report.
Transfer date, transfer value,
that stuff is all in the report as well.
And then listing information,
a lot of times what I'll try to do is I'll ask the seller,
"Do you have this property listed with a realtor right now?"
And if so, you can even call them
and get some more information from that person.
At the very bottom here, talks about the parcel map,
and this is another important thing you'll want to get.
Just to give you a quick example here,
I'm gonna search by one other criteria here in Kern County,
and that is by the parcel number.
Now I'm just basically gonna pick an example
from down here, the same property we just looked at
owned by John Smith.
I'm gonna type that parcel number here.
it's 001-064-111,
and just search for it.
And as you'll see here, it will actually bring us
right to that property with a parcel map around it,
so this is almost like getting a little survey
on the property.
Now, granted, these lines aren't always perfect.
It's usually very close, and it's close enough
to serve the purpose that you need.
You can also even do a bird's eye view.
I'll just expand this a little bit.
As you can see, this is really helpful stuff.
You can zoom in, see the property, where the lines are.
You can even rotate it and see it from different angles.
This is the kinda thing that,
this wasn't available two or three years ago,
and this stuff is very easily accessible now,
and you can evaluate properties from across the country now
without even seeing them.
If you can find this kind of stuff,
you can get a really good idea
for the type of property you're dealing with
just by looking at these maps.
So that is how we get the parcel map,
so there's there, and usually what I do
is I just do a screenshot of this
and just save an image of it for my file
just so that I can remember,
"Oh, yeah, it was that property."
Go back to the spreadsheet here.
Assessed value, again, that's something
that is in the profile report.
If we zoom down here, there's the assessed value.
Now, assessed values, they mean something
a little bit different in every state in the country,
so, really, the only reason
for putting in the assessed value
is on the assumption that you understand what that means.
Evaluation source is something that I almost always do
with properties like this.
I got to a website called trulia.com,
and trulia.com is actually extremely helpful.
Some other websites you could use
would be something like zillow.com or even realtor.com.
All we're looking for are other examples in the neighborhood
of this property to find out exactly what that value is.
So, really, what I always do is I just get the zip code,
and I plug it in here, and under property type,
I do the same property that I'm looking at,
Single-Family Home.
And I really just go down the list, and I say, "Okay,
"I know that my property is three bedrooms, one bathroom."
Well, let's see, here's one that fits that criteria,
and this one's going for $205,000,
so I'm gonna take that URL,
bring it over here, and just paste it.
We'll go back here.
Let's try to find another one here.
Three, bedrooms, one bath.
Here's another one.
Now this one is 199,000.
Okay.
Go back to the Excel spreadsheet and paste it in there.
And go back to Trulia.
Let's find one more three bedrooms, one bathroom.
Here's another one, and this one's a foreclosure.
And if it is a foreclosure,
that's something just to keep in mind,
because it doesn't necessarily reflect full market value.
But, really, the prices that we saw
was about 113,000, 199,000, and 205,000.
None of those listings in and of themself
should tell you what your property is worth,
but it should just give you an idea
what general price range our property's being listed for.
What this does is it tells you what kind of competition
are you gonna be up against
if you're trying to sell this property.
Are you gonna be able to price beneath these people
and sell it quickly, or are you gonna be stuck
at that price or higher,
so this really gives some good information
on what your limits are gonna be and if you're gonna be able
to be competitive with them or not,
and then down here, overall comments.
If there's any particular thing
that you found out about the property that is worth noting,
just for example I'll put here,
"Nice property, nice neighborhood,
"seems like a good deal,"
and that's just my notes when I want to go back to this file
and remember what I thought about it.
That's what I thought.
Based on the different property values that we saw,
if I wanna sell this thing in six months or less,
what am I gonna have to sell it at?
A lot of times what I'll do if I really want to be safe
is I'll actually call a few realtors in the area
and ask them that question, say,
"Hey, if I wanna move this thing very quickly,
"what would you say I have to price it at?"
And a lot of times, you get very different opinions
from different people, but it basically just gives you
a more educated opinion
from somebody's who's actually in that market
for what you need to do.
So let's just say if the quick sale price
that we came up with was $150,000.
Put there, if there's any back taxes owed on the property,
you would put that here.
In this case, we're just gonna say no.
All the taxes are current.
Purchase and closing costs.
A lot of times I just put in a standard
couple thousand bucks to cover that,
and then also closing cost on the selling
and when you're gonna resell the property.
Put 1,000 bucks in there.
Now, if you look below here,
these boxes tell you some pretty interesting things.
Using these numbers up here as the calculation,
it gives you a few different offers
that you can make on the property.
Now if these people, if you know they are desperate
and they have no other options,
you could make them the minimum cash offer amount,
which, in this case, would be 13,800 bucks.
That's 10% of your gross profit
if you were to sell it at 138,000.
And as you see, you can also do a medium cash offer
or a maximum cash offer, all the way up to 30%
of your gross profit amount,
and, really, the purpose for spitting out
three possible offer prices like this
is because it sort of gives you some wiggle room
so that no matter what you do,
you're gonna get a great deal.
But depending on what you've sensed from the seller
on their level of motivation,
and if they're really not that motivated
but you still wanna make an offer anyway,
then you might wanna do the 30% offer amount.
And then beneath there,
based on whichever offer price you choose,
you can also see your net profit from the deal.
So, really, this is the worksheet that I use
whenever I'm putting together offers,
and really what I do is whenever I get a new lead,
I create a new Excel file just like this,
and I go through it, and that's kinda how I do things,
so this works great for me.
It's helped me to really streamline my research process
and not waste hours and hours and hours researching things.
I just kinda, on average, spend somewhere
around 15 to 20 minutes per deal
just to kinda really get a good idea for what I'm doing
before I send the offer and make sure
that I'm as educated as I can be about the property
before I invest several hours of my time.
So, yeah, that is really the gist of how to do it.
If you'd like to download
this Excel spreadsheet for yourself,
I've actually included a link at the bottom of this post
that you can use to just download it
and use it for whatever your purposes are.
If you wouldn't mind, feel free to leave a comment
below this video.
If you're on the blog, feel free to leave a blog comment.
If you're watching this on YouTube,
feel free to leave a comment there.
Let me know how this is able to help you,
if it has helped you, what you think it could do for you,
and if there's anything else you'd like to see, let me know.
If you need more explanation or if there's something else
I can do to help you figure out this process
and streamline your research to be more effective,
I'd love to help you.
So as you can see, AgentPro's a pretty helpful tool,
especially for real estate investors like us
who are trying to get property information,
pull lists, things like that.
I personally don't know of even tool out there
that's better than this.
It's been just a really awesome resource for me.
So if you're watching this right now
and you're thinking to yourself,
"You know, this is good, I got to get in on this,"
then there's really a couple things that you can do.
First of all, if you want to do a free trial,
you can go right down here.
Click on that button and just follow the prompts
and do what you need to do.
But if you see this and you know right off the bat
this is what you need
and you wanna pull the trigger and sign up,
all you have to do is go right up here
to the Sign UP now button,
and the first thing that you're gonna see
is this right here, and what you're looking at right here
are all of the different types of subscriptions
that you can sign up for.
And something that you'll obviously see
if you look over here to the right
is really just the cost per month,
and that can be pretty expensive
all the way down to pretty cheap.
If you're looking to run a business
like the one that I do, you're probably gonna wanna go with
either this one right here, the bronze subscription
or the profile package over here,
and the only real difference is
with the bronze subscription you're gonna wanna
choose this one if your primary purpose
is just to pull lists for direct mail purposes.
If that's what you're after
and that's all you really wanna do,
then that's probably the best choice for you.
On the other hand, if you wanna use AgentPro
to actually do a lot of property research,
pull up property profile reports
and figure out transaction history market values,
locations, addresses, all this stuff,
in that case you'll probably wanna do the profile package
because it allows you to pull up to
50 full profiles per month.
Personally, my business model
doesn't really require me to pay a ton of money
for these really expensive subscriptions,
but I know that there are some business models out there
that actually require this kind of thing
if you wanna get foreclosure data
or mortgage information or all of that stuff.
If that's something you need, then by all means
feel free to sign up for some of these.
So whichever one you wanna do,
I want you to pay attention to something here
because this is a trick that not many people know about.
If you go right up here to the Partner ID box,
all you have to do is enter in this code: CFGRSH.
And when I click Update, I want you to pay attention
to what happens to all of these numbers here
because once I do that, all the prices for everything
across the board goes down 10%,
and that's not just the savings on one month.
That's a permanent savings
for the life of your subscription,
you'll definitely wanna enter that code in
and save yourself some money over the long haul.
Once you get your subscription,
and I'm gonna just pick that one for now,
go Next, and this window right here,
I don't really do anything with.
You can just hit Next again,
and then this one, again, you just hit Next again.
It just kind of summarizes the prices for you.
And this step right here, it's really just the usual drill
where you fill in all your contact information
and choose a password and all that,
but one thing I wanna draw your attention to
is the fact that all these fields
are actually required fields,
as you'll see by these little asterisks right here.
And, obviously, that's no big deal until you get down here
when it asks for your real estate license number.
I get a lot of questions from people who say,
"Seth, I can't get through
"because I'm not a real estate agent.
"I don't have that license number."
I'll just tell you right now it's okay.
All you got to do, if you're an investor,
is just type the word investor in here,
and then you'll have something in that field,
and then you'll be able to click on to the next one
and keep moving forward.
In the next couple of steps, you'll have to enter in
your payment information and make your first payment
and get started, and that's really all there is to it.
It's not too complicated.
So thanks, again, for watching.
I hope you found this video helpful.
You got any questions, you can always feel free
to call this support number here.
I know I've called that a couple times,
and usually they can help me
with whatever it is that I need.
So feel free to reach out to them if you need any help,
and, yeah, I wish y'all the best,
and go out there and find some deals.
Good luck!