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Property Research Is The Key

If you’re looking to make your fortune in real estate, you’d better learn how to conduct your property research because ‘the money is certainly in the research’ 

Investing in real estate can be a tricky business fraught with dangers for the unsuspecting investor. There are many tricks and manipulative techniques used by unscrupulous and unlicensed property marketers and if you are caught out, it will likely cost you big-time AND for along time.

Property Research Is Not Optional

The process of actually purchasing a property is the easy part of a real estate transaction. The majority of your time should be spent on property research. In fact when I purchase a property, the actual purchase might take as little as one hour.

However, I can assure you I have spent weeks, if not months on the property research -  investigating the specific location including demographics, transport infrastructure, local council plans, health, education and employment facilities. These issues are what I call the ‘internal economics’ of an area.

Once you’ve identified a specific location, you need to set about the process of identifying particular properties in that area. You can do this by literally ‘walking the streets’ AND speaking with ‘locals’ including business people, real estate agents, local council and anyone else you can find.

Once you have identified a property or properties that fit your requirements, you need to become very familiar with property values in the area – especially the value of the particular property you’re considering. This all falls into the category of property research.

There are many resources available that can assist you in establishing a property’s value. Some of these include FREE website such as Real Estate.com.au – where you can conduct a detailed search to identify and compare similar properties currently for sale and PRD Research – where you can research local demographics and historic property trends.

If you happen to own an iPhone, there is now an application that enables you to point the phone at the specific property and it will provide you with the latest sale date and how much it was sold for.

In addition to FREE resources there are a number of very good ‘user pay’ resources. If you’re serious about your property research (and you should be), it is certainly worthwhile investing in some of these.

Some of the more creditable ‘user pay’ resources are available from organisations such as Residex, PDS Live, RP Data and others. These organisations can provide you with reports that are specific to the suburb and property you’re researching.

Unfortunately many folks complain about having to spend a few hundred dollars on research – which is ironic, particularly when you consider they are about to spend $400,000, $500,000 or more on a property.

Let’s face it, property research is a minor cost in the overall scheme of things, yet it is by far the most important!

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