Visualization

Once you have screened the properties for affordability and obtained information from several county departments about the properties, the next consideration is the property’s location. You’ve probably heard that in real estate, it’s all about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. And in many ways, it’s true. The location can to a large extent determine the desirability of a property and how profitable it might be for you.


Location – Ideally, you will want to see the properties you are researching. If you live close enough to drive to see the properties, do so. This will give you a great sense for the property’s condition and surroundings.

Also, if you plan to attend an auction that is not close to your home, if possible, go a day or two early and drive to the properties you most want to see.Especially for homes, seeing the property is important. I have a hard time feeling comfortable with bidding on a home I haven’t seen. And my philosophy is that no matter what the investment is (real estate, mutual funds, or anything else) if I don’t feel comfortable with it, I don’t do it.

With raw land, I’m not so firm on that point. I don’t need to see the land to know enough to be comfortable bidding. As long as it is not under water, its dimensions, zoning, and topography allow me to build, and as long as there is a profit to be made, I’m okay not seeing raw land. You will need to determine for yourself your own preferences.

However, it is not always possible to see the properties you are bidding on beforehand. In these cases, you will need to find out as much as you can to try and get that comfort level to the point where you are okay bidding. There are several things that can help.
These resources are instrumental in your understanding of the due diligence process. Due diligence is the process you go through to evaluate each property in as much detail as possible so that you understand each aspect that could affect a property’s value as well as the likelihood that it will sell for a profit. Without doing your due diligence, you are risking purchasing a property that you will not be able to sell for a profit. In almost every case I have seen, someone who loses money when purchasing a property from a county tax sale has done so largely as a result of insufficient due diligence.
During your career as a real estate investor, these are some of the tools that you should become very proficient at using. This module is designed to help you better understand the tools available to you through the internet.


County Population Trend

Even if you are not familiar with the area, you can at least look at the population trend for the county. Go to http://www.naco.org/ and put your cursor over “About Counties”. From the drop-down menu, choose “Find a County”. Choose the state where the county is located and click on it. This will bring up a list of counties in the state in alphabetical order. Click on the one you are researching. When the new page opens, you will see the populations from 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2005. This should tell you whether the population is increasing or declining. If the population is declining, this is a red flag. You may decide not to work with the county at all if the population trend is consistently or dramatically downward. The county may have a lot of homes for sale with not very many people in the market to buy.

A declining population is not necessarily a deal-killer. You may find a city or two within a county that is doing well despite the overall county trend. You may also have information that might indicate a rebound upcoming or already in progress for the county. Also, if you can acquire the property for a small fraction of its value and sell it at a significant discount from the market value, you won’t be competing in the same market as those trying to get full market value for their properties. But definitely be aware of a declining population trend.

County GIS Maps

Some counties provide Geographical Information System maps of the property. These are basically enhanced parcel maps where you can see a satellite image of the property. Many of these can give you a glimpse as to the property’s location and surroundings. However, the view is usually limited to the property itself and possibly a couple of surrounding streets. You can find many of the county GIS maps by going to http://www.netronline.com/ and clicking on “Public Records Online”, then choosing the state, then choosing the county and in the middle of the screen a link may appear for the county’s GIS mapping system.By using information from the county, we can identify street intersections, landmarks, road names, and other points of reference so that we can gain a mental picture of the property. Then we can use the rest of the mapping sites to help identify the parcel of interest as well as the marketable attributes of the area (i.e. stores, schools, hospitals, golf courses, lakes, etc.).
To see an example of a GIS map, use the following link: www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/gis/MapWashtenaw_Main.htm
There is also a link on this page for you to learn how to effectively use the GIS system for this county. You will find that other counties have similar systems with similar features although the specifics may differ from one system to the next.

The County Assessor

Remember that even if you can’t see the property, the county assessor has (at least at some point). Any information you obtain about a property from the assessor is in a way like seeing the property through the county assessor’s eyes.


Neighbors

Sometimes neighbors can be a valuable source of information about a property. You will want to be sensitive about the fact that properties are being offered through a tax sale. So I don’t ever tell a neighbor exactly which property I’m looking at or how I found out that it was available. I don’t want a nosy neighbor to approach the property owner and embarrass him or her about losing the property. I also don’t want to give the neighbor any ideas of becoming my competition and bidding against me at the auction for the property.

So I simply call and say something like this: “Hi. My wife and I are looking to buy some property in your area and we ran across your neighborhood. What can you tell me about the neighborhood?” That open-ended question should get them talking. From there, I may ask some more specifics like, “Are most of the homes well kept?”, “Are there any homes that you are aware of that have foundation problems, plumbing issues, etc.?”, “Are there any vacant lots in your neighborhood?”, “What are homes and/or vacant lots selling for in your neighborhood?”, etc.

Many times neighbors can provide valuable information about the area and sometimes the property itself.


Google Earth

The best research tool for visualization if you can’t see the property yourself is Google Earth.
You can download Google Earth here: http://earth.google.com/ (don’t use www.).
This site is free to use. Look for the download link in the top right hand corner in the green box.
Click “Download Google Earth (free)” on the top right of the home page.
On the next page, start the download by clicking “Download Google Earth”.
Save it to your desktop, then let it download.
Once the download is complete, run the software; go through the install / setup.
There is also a great tutorial on how to use Google Earth at:http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/tutorials/index.html
In this module we will go over some of the interesting features of Google Earth.

Finding a Property on Google Earth:

Once you have opened the program, take the address of the property you are researching and type it into the search box in the upper-left corner of the screen. For the purposes of this example, type in your address. Why? Because it’s fun to start with your own home. Once you get familiar with how to use Google Earth, you can start using the addresses of the properties you are researching.
Click on the magnifying glass icon. This will “fly” you in to the property.You will see a satellite image of the property.Moving the View (Panning):
The view you see in Google Earth defaults to the top of the screen being toward the north, the bottom to the south, the right to the east, and the left to the west. You can move the view you are seeing one of two ways.
1) In the upper-right hand corner, you will see arrows pointing each way (inside the circle showing which way is north) and you can click on those to move the view a little at a time.
2) The easier way to move the view is to click and drag. For example, if you want to see more to the right of the screen, go to the right side of the view and click and hold the mouse button. While it is still pressed down, drag your mouse to the left and release the mouse button when you are done. This will drag the view in the direction you want. You can do this as much as you want to see surrounding properties, neighborhoods, points of interest, etc.
Rotating the View:
Even though the default directions (north, south, east, and west) are set, if you want to, you can rotate the view.The circle in the upper-right corner will do this. Use the same click and drag feature mentioned earlier to click on a part of the circle and drag the view around the circle to rotate the view.
Zooming in and Out:
You can zoom in our out by using the controls in the upper-right corner of the screen. There is a bar going up and down along the right. If you click on the plus sign at the top, it will zoom you in. If you click on the minus sign at the bottom, it will zoom you out and give you a broader view of the area.
By zooming in and out, you want to get a sense of the property and its surroundings. Is it a neighborhood? Is it fairly rural, or part of a larger, developed area?
Marking Locations:
You can also mark the locations you are researching so you can come back to them very easily later.
To do this, once you have located the property, click on the icon that looks like a thumbtack with a plus sign next to it which appears across the top of the screen.
This will bring up a box that asks you to give that location a name. Before you put in a name, be sure to put the marker right next to the property you are identifying by clicking and dragging it to where you want it.
To name the placemark, you could type in the property address or the parcel number from your list of properties or whatever else is easy for you to remember.
Note that this also gives you the latitude and longitude coordinates of the property.
Along the left-hand side of your Google Earth page, you will notice that your placemark is saved under the “Places” tab. This will help you go back later if you need to.
Using Layers:
Layers are some of the most important features on Google Earth. You will use them to find things you can use as selling points in your property listing when you go to sell the property.
The layers function is found in the bottom-left corner of your Google Earth screen.
When you first look at the layers section, you will notice that there are several categories of things that you can make settings for. Each of these categories has a plus sign next to it. If you click on the plus sign, it will show you a list of sub-categories that you can either “select” or “unselect”. To select a layer, click in the empty box next to the item you want to select. This will put a check mark in that empty box and this is how you know it is selected. If you want to unselect an item, click on the check mark and it will go away. This is how you know it is unselected.Although there are many layers to choose from, only some of them will be helpful for your research.
I like to have “Roads” selected so I can see the major highways and how close they are to the property. People like to live close to highways (but not too close) because it makes their travel to work and other places easier. But for vacation properties, they like to be away from highways. Keep in mind who your potential buyers are for each property.
Now go down to the “Places of Interest” category. This will help you identify things in the area that will increase the number of people interested in your property and how much they are willing to pay for your property. These in many cases will be your selling points.
Before clicking on these layers to activate them, you will want to zoom out a little from the property itself so you can get a good sense of what is in the area. You can continue to zoom in and out as necessary to see what you would like to see.
You can click on layers like coffee shops, dining, banks/ATMs, gas stations and convenience stores, grocery stores, major retail stores, pharmacies, shopping malls, golf courses, parks and recreation areas, sports venues, tourist spots, hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc.
Each of these layers has a specific icon that will show up where those things are located in relation to the property. For example, dining establishments will be represented by a fork and knife, banks and ATMs by a dollar sign.
When you have activated a layer and one of those icons shows up on the map, you can put your cursor over it to see more details on it. For example, if you see the dining icon and you put your cursor over it, you might find out that it is a McDonalds, or Arby’s, or Jim’s Family Restaurant!!! If you click on the icon, it will pull up some additional information about that establishment (usually and address and phone number and maybe a user review). You can also get driving directions to or from the establishment.
In some areas, if you select a lot of layers at the same time, you will get too many icons on the screen to keep track of. If this is the case, just unselect some of them until it is more manageable.
Measuring Distances:
Once you have identified these places of interest, you might want to find out how far they are from the property you are researching. Google Earth has a great feature to allow you to do this very easily. It is the ruler icon found across the top. Click on the ruler.
There are two ways you can measure distances. One is in a straight line. If you want to do it this way, you can just click on the ruler and when it opens the ruler instruction box, select the “Line” tab at the top if it is not already selected. Then put your cursor back onto the property (you will see a white box). Click once and it will place the first marker on the property. Then move your cursor to the other location you want to measure the distance for (maybe a grocery store) and click again. Inside the box, it will tell you how many miles from the property to the store.
However, you may want to use the other ruler function which is to find the distance along a path since you usually can’t drive in a straight line from the property to the store. In this case, click on the ruler icon and select the “Path” tab inside the box it opens up. Then put your cursor back over the property and click once. This will place a red dot on the property. Then go to where you would have to turn in the car and place another dot there the same way. Continue to do the same thing until you have put the path in place from the property to the store. This will add up the distances between the dots and give you a more accurate representation of the driving distance.
Main Benefits of Google Earth
The main benefits of Google Earth are:
You can get a comfort level with a property that you otherwise could not get
By the time you are done looking at all that Google Earth offers, if you acquire the property, you practically have your sales listing prepared!!! You know all of the amenities and attractions in the area and these are your main selling points!
Local Livelocal.live.com – This is also a free site. It came out around May, 2006 and has some great value. As long as you have a street address, you can get a good picture of the property you are looking for. Some of the rural areas that cannot be seen with Google Earth are more clearly visible with Local Live. Make sure you try to look at the Bird’s Eye View.
This site is used mostly for the quality of the satellite images that are available through the bird’s eye view.
Close the advertisement to the left of the map, this will make the map larger.
Enter the street name, city and state at the top of the page.
Press enter.
Select the “Hybrid” option to look at the satellite imagery.
Select the bird’s eye view to see a clearer image. (Some areas don’t have a bird’s eye view).
Click on the “3D” option to get a cool 3D look.
Google Mapshttp://www.maps.google.com/ - Another free site we can use. Recently you may have seen a strange car driving around your neighborhood with a strange camera mounted system on it. Google has really stepped up taking mapping to a new level. Through the street view we can see an almost camera quality image of the front of the property. While many places don't have access to this yet. It is worth looking into for any property we are looking at. This resource is almost identical to local.live.com.
Conclusion:
Use the tools mentioned in this module to help you visualize a property and determine if it is one that has a good chance of selling quickly.