Rental Property Investor · Scottsdale, AZ · Member since 2018 · 49 posts · 44 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim Real estate is a very data intensive business. Everyone probably likes something different, but two areas where real estate investors can benefit from information is marketing and financial modeling.
Developing a solution to compile lists of property data and property owner data by market with a bunch of user defined slices and dices would be valuable. Just look at the question above about an e-mail address. Hint, many jurisdictions sell their property tax rolls and these lists often include varying amounts of both data...
The other area is financial modeling. Look at the calculator section of this site. They have a number of different modeling solutions for readers. The ability to review market data, comparable data, historical subject data, and model what ifs is also valuable to investors.
My thought would be to see how either of these two disciplines relate to your experience, and which might be something you could develop.
Real Estate Broker · Salt Lake City & Oklahoma City · Member since 2018 · 3k+ posts · 2k+ votes
7y
Absolutely you can! The best way I can think of is to offer your skills (like programing something that an established investor would be benefitted by) in exchange for partnering in a deal (or heck, even just to get in the room and learn from their experience).
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim I could be way off here on how your computer programming skills work, but if you could put a program together or know how to gather data to find homeowners email addresses then I would say you have an amazing spot in REI. Example of what I'm talking about.......
I give you a persons first and last name
And I give you their primary home mailing address
Then you do your computer magic and get me their primary email address.
Real Estate Broker · Salt Lake City & Oklahoma City · Member since 2018 · 3k+ posts · 2k+ votes
7y
I would recommend figuring out who is leading in the space you'd like to grow into (like if you want to build a multi-family rental portfolio, then who are the dominators in that space where you are? Then look through the observable things about their business that you can use your skills to add value to, and then try to add value before you ever approach them.
For instance, if you can program websites and run FB ads pretty well and you notice that an investor in your area that you'd like to partner with could use some help in that area, then work on building a site (basic or robust) for them to use in marketing and then try to get together with them and show them how to use it for their business. Then ask if you can continue to do stuff like that for them and learn about RE investing along the way.
Rental Property Investor · Scottsdale, AZ · Member since 2018 · 49 posts · 44 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim Real estate is a very data intensive business. Everyone probably likes something different, but two areas where real estate investors can benefit from information is marketing and financial modeling.
Developing a solution to compile lists of property data and property owner data by market with a bunch of user defined slices and dices would be valuable. Just look at the question above about an e-mail address. Hint, many jurisdictions sell their property tax rolls and these lists often include varying amounts of both data...
The other area is financial modeling. Look at the calculator section of this site. They have a number of different modeling solutions for readers. The ability to review market data, comparable data, historical subject data, and model what ifs is also valuable to investors.
My thought would be to see how either of these two disciplines relate to your experience, and which might be something you could develop.
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
@David M. @Sinil Kim just like David said, I’m not skilled in your line of work with programming, computers and putting programs to collect and find data. Not sure how all that works and I have very large direct mail lists that are targeted to specific properties. I don’t have time to look up one individual at a time to try and find the right email address. So if I could find a way to send a huge excel sheet with owners names and mailing addresses to a guy like you to figure out how to process that info and get good email address I could save possibly save thousands of dollars in marketing. Have tried this before but too many hurdles with bad lists and not knowing what is going into spam and actual inbox. David grasps what I’m saying. Imagine paying for a huge target list only once and sending tens of thousands of emails every week for a small monthly fee from a email delivery company. Of course data comes into play but a good email list seems to be the hardest thing to get first.
Rental Property Investor · Queens, NY · Member since 2018 · 54 posts · 10 votes
7y
@Mike Flora If you have an email list that are already sorted by a group or specific property target, it's not hard to make a program for sending an email with attachments regularly. Yes I can make it if people need. You want like automatic email program which send email with attachment to the certain group. I developed that kind of system before. I don't know that's what you want.
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim I would want to send you a excel list of 100,000 people and their primary mailing address. Then I would want you to scrub that list somehow through a program that would give me their primary email address. Obviously you would not go through each name individually but maybe there is public information floating around on the internet/websites of these people/mailing address a program could find and link it to their email address.
You get the list
You type in or do whatever and hit enter or run or whatever computer stuff you do.
Then in a few hours or however long it would take for the program to scrub the list it gives you these peoples emails.
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim I’m in California and I’m looking to buy single family residences in riverside county. The owners primary mailing addresses are all over the place but some are owner occupied houses as well. The excel list has the property owners primary mailing address and their property address I want to purchase so maybe there could still be a way to link all this in an area to find their email address.
It's a bit counter-intuitive, but one of the best things you can do with your software engineering career is make money, buy real estate, and make relationships with other medium >> high net worth individuals who need investment options.
Aside from starting (and fully dedicating yourself to) a company that provides a specific REI service (Placester, Roofstock, Redfin, Honest Buildings, and so many others), there are not that many custom software needs I have seen for REI investors. Granted, big commercial firms and hedge funds likely need analysis in the space, but that is not exactly the audience for Bigger Pockets.
I know this because I am also a software engineer. I have racked my brain for years as to how I could be more helpful for other investors and provide value. Aside from data scrapers and a few one-off projects here and there, my best resource has been my network and my steady job (which also makes credit a little easier to come by).
One other thing to consider. Everything in investment is about opportunity cost. If, for instance, you have a friend that runs a general contracting company, the opportunity cost to get into flipping and actively managed rehab projects is very low. This person can build their business and probably increase per-hour returns utilizing an investment strategy. For me, it's much different. If I leave the office to fix leaky faucets, I am trading a very high hourly rate for a low payout. Once you start considering this, the cost of management and partnership becomes a veritable necessity.
The managers and partners you will meet over the years are always in need of one thing: money. They need more individuals to invest with them. That's where you can be a great link to new sources of financing. Reasonable incomes and savings are minted in the tech field every day. I am not talking about millionaire startup founders (although that's nice as well). Run of the mill software engineers are in the mid to high net worth range, and that's a great kind of person to have as an investor.
Specialist · Philadelphia PA · Member since 2018 · 6 posts · 7 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim I am a data analyst / ETL developer. My skills have come in very clutch since I started applying them to REI. I scrape listings to sql for cleaning then have a PowerBI dashboard showing summary stats, heatmaps, and a bunch of other insights to drive deal discovery. I also scrape rent listings and sold properties going back 6months to create a comparables database that I use to find comps on the fly. As a software dev I'm sure you could incorporate your code to do some cool things especially if you are a python guy. I am new to REI but ive found data is huge factor in having a leg up on market competition.
Real Estate Agent · Tampa, FL · Member since 2019 · 3 posts · 0 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim I was actually looking at a few other apps and the idea of tech came to mind. I’m an innovative and forward thinker. I’m connected to a strong network of investors. Let’s talk
Real Estate Agent · Salt Lake City, UT · Member since 2014 · 473 posts · 230 votes
7y
Create an easy to use/understand property management site! It baffles me how terrible the options are in that sphere. I’ve started to get used to Buildium, but it’s still pretty substandard imo