By Ruth Jill
Compared to other investment vehicles, many people find that putting their money in real estate is often a better move towards financial stability. After all, real estate investments have a predictable cash flow, high appreciation value, can be leveraged for higher returns, and provide equity.
Investing in real estate is certainly a reliable way to achieve financial success in the future and lock-in your retirement plans. So to maximize your real estate investments, you should be able to utilize certain technological tools that can help fast-track progress and yield.
In this post, we’ve listed several tech tools that can assist you with your real estate investments.
What’s great about online property finders such as Zillow and Realtor.com is that they can give you access to real estate details such as occupancy statistics, area demographics, school ratings, and even local weather patterns. Additionally, online property finders can also widen your network and connect you with other professionals who can supply you with local information. This should help you in deciding if a property is worth investing your time, money, and resources.
Did you know that you can locate and purchase investment properties online as well? Services like Roofstock.com allow you to search out and select rental properties around the U.S. that already have a profitable rental history, tenants in place, property management and are generating cash flow. For multifamily and commercial properties, Loopnet.com is an excellent resource as well.
If you are “driving for dollars” and see a property that interests you, you can use curbside apps such as DealMachine, which is a real estate investing app that allows you to contact a property owner by simply snapping a picture of the property with your phone. vAnother app that you can use is DealCheck, which is real estate analysis software that you can use to compare and analyze investment properties.
The PropertyShark app, allows you to search for any property in the US and produce reports that can help you make educated decisions.
If you want to make your job easier, you should take advantage of the various property analysis tools that you can find online. Through these programs, real estate investors can analyze, compare, and find properties that match their needs. You can also find a property analysis tool that gives sound property advice on BiggerPockets.com.
Today’s competitive real estate landscape requires investors to develop key skills that can help them make more informed decisions on handling their properties. For one, you can upskill your management skills through additional courses that will teach you how to communicate better with property owners and tenants, help you market your properties effectively, and instruct you on how to handle your investments better.
Perhaps one of the most useful skills today’s real estate investors should learn is analyzing data. Indeed, real estate investors who understand data analytics are all the more in-demand right now, with a KPMG Global PropTech survey noting that only 5% of real estate firms have had initiatives led by data science experts.
However, statistics from Burning Glass Technologies projects annual data created worldwide will skyrocket to 180 trillion gigabytes by 2025. So in order to keep up with the rapidly growing data landscape, investors need to put in the effort to understand analytics and see how it will impact real estate. The best way to develop this skill is by enrolling in an online master’s in data analytics. Aside from helping you understand the basic concepts in analytics, many online courses also touch on other key data competencies like data principles, data visualization, and predictive modeling. This way, you can study and apply key data insights to property price indices, automated valuation models, time series forecasting, and geographic information systems. Upskilling through online courses is the best course of action for busy real estate investors as they can usually be finished remotely — as well as at their own pace and time.
To help you manage, track, and keep your real estate investments in line, you need to use property management databases. Through the databases, you are provided an overview of your properties and see where you need to adjust to gain bigger profits. Additionally, you can also use this technology to manage any rental properties that provide you with stable, passive income. Aside from helping you accomplish important tasks such as managing expenses, collecting rent, and setting goals for your property managers, property management software can also help you with processing maintenance requests, run tenant screenings, and better interact with your tenants. You can find a wide variety of property management software available to download online, such as the ones from Appfolio and Accruent. These two types of software are trusted by real estate investors across the country.
Overall, real estate investors should understand how to leverage the tech tools available today in order to find success in their respective careers. For more tips on how to maximize your real estate investments, be sure to check our blog on a regular basis.
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exclusively written for OldDawgsReiNetwork.com
by Ruth Jill