Does Anyone Use Real Estate Investment Tools??

Question

Hello,

I am reaching out to the community to see if anyone was willing to share what tools they were using to qualify deals or even determine what avenue is best for a property (fix and flip or BRRR etc.). Is it mostly excel? I would love to learn more about tools you love or tools you really did not love and why!

Some of the tools I have seen can get pretty expensive so I'm just hoping to get some honest feedback before making any investments!

Alex Wright · Answer

Dominic’s pretty much right.

I’ve tried a bunch of tools too and eventually realized they all kinda do the same thing at a surface level. They’ll spit out numbers, but they don’t really tell you if a deal actually can withstand any variation.

What helped me more was just getting quicker at ruling stuff out. I’ll do a quick pass on rent, rough expenses, price and if it’s not even close, I’m out. Most deals don’t make it past that anyway. If it does look decent, then I’ll dig in a bit more and that’s where tools (or a good spreadsheet) actually start to matter. Instead of just running one version, I’ll usually tweak a couple things like if rent comes in a bit lower, expenses a bit higher, some vacancy etc. A lot of deals look fine until you do that.

As for tools vs Excel... Excel works fine. Tools just make it easier to run those different scenarios quickly, keep things consistent, and compare deals without rebuilding everything each time and breaking equations.

Reps are important early on. You’ll learn way more doing that than trying to find the “best” tool. Theres some great tools out there but most just skim the surface of what you should be looking at

Dominic Mazzarella · Answer

I’ve tried a bunch of tools, but I keep it pretty simple now. Most of them can get you in the ballpark, but they don’t solve the bigger issue, which is whether the deal was ever worth looking at in the first place. I usually do a quick first-pass screen on rents, rough expenses, and price vs. comps, and a lot of deals get killed in the first few minutes. If it passes that, then I’ll spend more time underwriting it properly. Excel is more than enough for that. In my experience, you get a lot more out of running deals and seeing what actually holds up than trying to find the perfect tool upfront.

Does Anyone Use Real Estate Investment Tools??

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