10 Real Estate Calculations To Help You Analyze An Investment Property Effectively (+2K Views)

Investing in a property can be exciting, but taking the time to properly analyze your deal is paramount. In some cases, what may seem like a good deal at first glance may actually cause financial pitfalls long-term. Similarly, when comparing two or more possible investment opportunities, one property may seem to offer a great investment up front, while the other actually offers the best return over time.

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There are several must-know numbers and calculations if you ever hope to analyze investment properties effectively. Below, not only will you find a comprehensive guide to the only formulas you’ll ever need, but free real estate investment calculators to make your property valuation process a breeze:

5 Property Valuation Tips To Commit To Memory

If you gleaned anything from the guide to real estate investment calculators above, perhaps it’s that there are a plethora of helpful formulas to ensure that you can identify the best possible investment deal. However, it can be easy to mix them up or interpret calculations incorrectly. To help you avoid such missteps, here are 5 property valuation tips to abide by:

• Spend time collecting common data points from each property before running comparisons. When learning about which real estate calculators are used most often, you will discover that there is a common set of property data points that are used repeatedly. To save yourself time and effort, make a habit of automatically making note of the most commonly used numbers for each property of interest. Purchase price, rental income, net operating income, estimated repair costs, operating expenses are a few examples of data points that are used in many calculations.
• Be thorough and meticulous when estimating property expenses. An estimate of property expenses is required to calculate important data points such as net operating income, rental yield, and capitalization rate. Because of this, not having a proper estimate of expenses can throw off all of your real estate calculations, thus leading to the risk of investing in a bad deal. To come up with a good estimate of expenses, contact local landlords and property management companies to inquire about property expenses for similar properties, as well as running your own thorough analysis.
• Apply the same metrics and standards when analyzing each property. Failing to run the same calculations for each and every property of interest defeats the purpose of performing a thorough comparison analysis. By running the same set of calculations consistently for each property, you will be able to develop your own metrics and benchmarks for separating good deals from bad deals.
• Make use of spreadsheets and online calculation tools. Because running several calculations for each and every property you come across can be tedious, save time by developing a system of spreadsheets and online calculators to run your analyses for you. Simply pre-program a spreadsheet with the necessary formulas so you can plug in data points. In addition, making use of technology helps to minimize human error.
• Predetermine and stick to a set of standards and guidelines. Over time, real estate investors will develop their own standards and guidelines to identify profitable investment deals. Having guidelines will help investors streamline their property searches, as well as help them avoid potentially bad deals.

…Hopefully in the above guide you have found at least one real estate calculator that you plan to enlist in your next deal analysis. Minding your due diligence and thoroughly running your numbers will not only help you detect bad deals, but will help build your investing portfolio in the most profitable manner.

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