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.
I'm a software engineer (programmer) and a newbie in REI.
I want to learn by using my skill.
any suggestion??
I also started as a software engineer. No, there is not a useful way to reinvent the wheel. Why would you? Every resource, method, process, and system I (and everybody else) use were written years ago. Oh sure, there have been updates but "program if you love programming" and then let someone buy you turnkey properties to make you rich or learn real estate so you can do it yourself. Your programming skills are valuable if they give you enough money to invest wisely in real estate. I have been at this for 25 years. I make multiples more money in real estate than I ever did in programming at a time when all of this was being coded and at that time GREAT money was being made coding. Now, Buying properties (or lending) are the only ways to learn real estate.
Lender · Pensacola, FL · Member since 2017 · 658 posts · 626 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim
Business skills are more important than technical skills in real estate or any other business. You might never have heard of Ronald Wayne before, for example, but he cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. He determined early on from the information he had at the time that it was in his best interest to part ways with the others. You need to stay within your circle of competence to be successful.
My skills are in line with the technical skills of an individual contributor and not with the people skills of a general manager, for example. I earned good money over the years doing what I'm good at doing, living below my means and investing the rest intelligently (in my case, the stock market, and I was a homeowner for half my life). Eventually, I was making enough investment income to cover my living expenses so I could FIRE.
If you want to test applying your software skills to real estate, I've noticed real estate app startups every once in a while seeking funding on various Reg CF crowdfunding portals. 506(c) crowdfunding sites such as PeerStreet and Upstart were founded by ex-Googlers if you want to research these people as role models to learn how they did it. In any event, your ability to think logically will take you far in life no matter what you end up doing.
Real Estate Agent · San Antonio, TX · Member since 2017 · 814 posts · 466 votes
7y
I would imagine you can write your own web-based software for so many things in REI.
Things you can do below. Of course there are free sources for Landlords and Tenants that do this, but I find there are not much room for customization):
1. Build a web-based platform for screening tenants including forms, etc.
2. Create web sites for Landlords and maybe start selling licenses.
3. Create a software or system for advertising properties (sell, buy, rent, etc.) that may link into the other free websites at once without the use of MLS (Realtor, Trulia, Zillow, etc.)
4. Create a software that grab available properties and compare rent, selling price, days on market, etc. by number of rooms, zip code, distance from a particular location, square feet, etc.
5. Most importantly, these stuff are already out there for basically no or low cost. I can tell you, when I'm analyzing properties, I have to open several sources to come-up with all the information I need. So a great thing you can do is have all this in one simple platform with options for the end user. That will be GREAT!!!!
As an engineer myself, I like to solve problems. So I always questioned what can be done to better the process or solve a particular problem. My problem is the waste of time opening too many sources to gather the information I need for analyzing properties. Can be done, just time consuming when you are analyzing hundreds of properties within two months window.
@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.
Can you do this?
That may have some legal implications of the use of personal information. Asking for trouble.
Real Estate Broker · Durham, NC · Member since 2018 · 43 posts · 61 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim
Real estate investing is ALL about finding deals. That’s how wholesalers make money, that’s how buy and hold investors make money, that’s how flippers/contractors make money. If you’re in real estate you’re in the business of finding a good deal. I know there are “tall grass lists” and delinquent tax lists and all that Jazz- those are just boring lists. If you could put together a system that stirs up deals with high regularity and precision, you’d be a genius. Ideas: find out properties that have been passed down through wills, look for divorces, vacancies, for sale by owner inventory, etc. and somehow use computer skills to identify likely deals. I’m sure it’s been done but not done well. Just my thoughts.
Lender · Pensacola, FL · Member since 2017 · 658 posts · 626 votes
7y
@Sinil Kim
One REI idea you might want to pursue is using your software skills on a W-2 gig at a crowdfund company. Big data and analytics captured the public's imagination a few years ago when the Oakland As became the best team in baseball.
Crowdfunding might look like magic, but it's the marriage of RegTech (JOBS Act of 2012) and FinTech (inexpensive powerful computers) that makes crowdfunding possible. It still takes the hard work of software engineers to make a crowdfund company happen.
DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how to find a job anymore. I haven't worked in years.
I definitely would not go the email path as there are some pretty strict and severe laws about that.
However direct mail is alive and well and I assume you are not afraid of data. That is the key. There is SO MUCH out there now (data-wise) to show you where to send offers, who to send them to, and how to price them to get a good response.
We've been doing it since the 90s and it keeps getting easier. We use direct assessor data and send offers directly to property owners (all types of properties from land to commercial to SFR), buy for cash, and resell quickly as wholesalers for more.
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
I have done mass emails before and the problem is bad email scrubbed lists and not knowing what is going into spam email or actual inbox. We pay a company to send out all the emails and as long as you have an unsubscribe button there is nothing wrong with sending emails to people. The idea is good just the finding of the good lists and going to the owners actual inbox is the problem. These are huge lists I'm talking about here so takes too much time to find one by one and with a click of a button with all the emails you can deliver 100,000 emails.
Since you are spending time/$ anyway, maybe test/consider a personalized approach?
We send professional offers in the mail to property owners that we pre-selected based on our criteria and wait for them to contact us back. They typically call, or sign & return our offer. The sellers *often* state they have received generic offers - but NOTHING personalized with a specific price like we send.
It really gets their attention AND a great way to smoke out who is interested in selling and if your price works.
Investor · Menifee, CA · Member since 2015 · 534 posts · 216 votes
7y
@Jill DeWit I hear you and I have targeted mail lists just like you and I send personal letters to them with offers etc etc, but I also have very large targeted lists of properties that I send mail to. So currently after I get my targeted property list in an excel sheet with property I want to purchase, owners name and mail address I send this off to a company who puts it on a postcard and mails it off for us. Lets say a list of 20,000 takes 2 min to get done and sent off for the corporation to mail for us at a pretty good price. Now what if I take that same large list on my excel sheet of say 100,000 targeted homes to a computer guy and I get back 100,000 emails of the owners of the targeted properties and then I click a button with my personal message/pictures etc etc in the email company I use to deliver all 100,000 emails that lets say 70,000 make it to their actual inbox and not spam for only $1,000. Data will show on how many responses you get etc etc but if it works then you do the math on how much you will be saving in marketing!!! Im trying to get around bad email scrubbed lists and figuring out how many mails go to spam or inbox. Hey, at least im trying something new in real estate investing, which pretty much is a marketing and sales business. If you want to have a real estate business that is.