Cool Tools For Real-Estate Groupies
While browsing through some real-estate blogs — and believe me there are a gazillion of them out there, some better than others — I stumbled upon some valuable new tools for those of us who labor in, or merely take an interest in, this complex, crazy industry.
First up, courtesy of Mike Simenson’s blog at Altos Research, I discovered Krunching.com (love that name). Krunching, which is geared towards real estate investors, allows you to pull up an investment analysis report on any address in California. Thus, part of a Krunching report for this recently listed home with artist’s studio at 3118 California Street in Berkeley looks like this:
One drawback is that the data Krunching must rely on is somewhat out of date — I gather they’re working to rectify this.
Also via Mike Simenson, I found Homethinking.com which lets you answer questions such as, How much exposure does my town have to sub-prime loans? and What percent of mortgage applicants are rejected? It does this by letting you browse through actual mortgage application data.
Both these tools are tilted to the professional rather than the lay person, but they are worth checking out. There’s no such thing as too much information when you’re in the market to buy property.
Finally it would be remiss of me not to mention Redfin’s own newly refined search tools. If you haven’t discovered them already, you should know that you can now hunt for homes that are for sale by owner (FSBO), as well as track down bank-listed foreclosures and find past sales data. Here’s what the first step to your future home may look like:
Trawling through blogs also throws up other delightful discoveries. It’s not often Socket Site ventures over the Bay Bridge but a couple of days ago it posted an Eichler in Oakland that I just had to mention (I’m a not-so secret-Eichler fan). Here’s what it looks like:
Never mind cool tools. That’s one cool house.
[Photo credit: SocketSite.]
