Finding due diligence in area

[Chris Hester]

How exactly would an investor looking to go into a new area do their “due diligence” on a neighborhood?

[Moises R Cosme]

Chris, 

1. Get with an Agent & ask them to run a CMA for you. Have them use the following factors to determine whether you have a comp or not: age of subject (within 20 years down & up), style of subject (try to identify the approximate baseline per sq foot sales value of each style), square footage (within 200 square feet up & down), number of bedrooms (if subject has 3, you have to look at 3 or more; less than 3 bedrooms are typically less valuable because they appeal to single people instead of families), number of baths (1 is bad & you need to compare to properties that only have 1, 1.5 is less bad, 2 is good, anything more than 2 is good), parking (off street vs. on street & garage vs. no garage)

2. IF you cannot get an Agent to do the diligence for you - try to use Redfin, Realtor.com, Zillow.com.  You will need to manually go through the town/neighborhood that you want to learn about by writing down the address, the sale price, number of days on market, age of property, style of property, square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms etc.  Throw everything on a spreadsheet and follow it, that way you can start to get a really good feel for the neighborhood.

3. You can also Google:  Town/City Name GIS, this should allow you to pull up a GIS map for a specific property or street.  If you click on the record, you will normally find a 'stack' where a tax card is stored for the property.  Some towns list prior sales in their stack and this can give you a lot of good information.

3 different ways to go at it - none of these is particularly quick, but I think diligence is a lot about the process of learning through rote tactics.  I hope this helps!!!