Tech tools to make real estate life a bit easier

For real estate investors, it’s important to always be on the lookout for new tools, processes, resources, and best practices to help improve your business. In a recent article, Patch of Land offered several great suggestions for technology tools to help fix-and-flip real estate investors:

• HouseCanary is an online data and analytics platform helping real estate investors understand the true value of a property. It evaluates a particular home’s potential using an extensive database of housing information and a predictive analytics engine.  One valuable feature of HouseCanary is that it helps create a more professional appearance in materials when presenting to a potential lender.

• DealMachine helps facilitate opportunities for buying off-market properties. Using the DealMachine app to take a picture of a potentially viable distressed or vacant property, it will show you information about the property. With a simple push of a button, the user instructs DealMachine to send a personalized postcard to that owner offering to buy the house. This can help investors make more offers on investment homes and provide the ability to act quickly on off-market properties that seem like good candidates for house flipping.

• Property Fixer is an app that evaluates a property through a flip analysis. By using the basic information about the property, an investor can find out a broad estimate of profit and return potential on the investment. One user commented, "I am a very active realtor and have integrated the Property Evaluator app in my everyday business. Honestly, I just met with an investor earlier today who kept ranting on and on about how he loved the presentation and how professional it was and it's so much better than his Excel sheets. Little does he know it took me about 5 minutes to get the report ready."

• Magic Plan helps to determine what kind of changes a flipper might make as far as rehab or upgrades are concerned in order to increase potential profit. This app is a user-friendly floor plan creator that lets you use the pictures you take of the property’s interior and, using augmented reality, aggregates a digital version of the floor plan of any room. It can calculate the amount of flooring in a space and provide an estimate on the quantity and price of paint or wallpaper. You can also see the rooms in 3-D and export the plans to other programs.

• Patch of Land offers a platform that allows you to submit an investment loan in minutes and get nationwide private money funding in just a few days. The need to secure funding to purchase and/or renovate a property is essential, especially when banks and conventional mortgage lenders are reluctant to loan to fix-and-flip investors.