So I was just listing a new property on Postlets again the other day…and thinking to myself,
“Man…how dang cool is this? I mean, what an incredible marketing resource for real estate investors to have access to?”
So then I got this idea to put together an article sharing some of the top, most important non-guru websites that every real estate investor should know about and probably be using.
And believe me, Postlets is right at the top of the list. Right there with Google Maps and Craigslist.
But suddenly I got to thinking that you guys have probably discovered and are privy to a good number of great online resources that I’m not even privy to…
Then it hit me — BLAMO! — Crowdsourcing Blitz!
Crowdsourcing can mean a couple of different things. But in this case it’s a fancy word for having others in a community (i.e. you) help create valuable content to share with everyone else.
So let’s “crowdsource” our efforts and put together a killer list of top REI websites!
So here’s the deal…
- All you need to do is leave a comment (below) with the best, most useful websites you’re aware of online. And specifically I mean useful to in your real estate investing endeavors. Whether it’s a research tool, lead source, social networking or bookmarking device or whatever.
. - Tell us the full URL / website address, plus a few words about why you think it’s so great that others should be aware of it. In other words, what’s the practical use of it?
. - Even if you see someone else has already left your top pick, go ahead and chime in with it anyway. That way we can tell which one’s are really the most popular picks.
. - And again, please remember we’re not looking for guru-websites this go around. Yes, some of them are great resources. But please let’s save that for a separate list and a post of it’s own, OK?
So that’s it. Go at it! Let’s see what you got! Chime in below.
You should use tweetbeep.
The url is: http://www.tweetbeep.com and it works like google alerts. You can set it up to send you email messages when certain terms are used on twitter.
Hey J.P.!
Love the blog…good stuff and good idea for a post.
With short sales being so popular right now, a good site to check out is SeasonedFunds.com. I have never used them or any other like it, so I can’t say this is a recommendation, but the site isn’t guru related so I figure it fits your criteria.
Sean Flanagan
Man you beat me to the punch! 😉
Great minds think alike… I have a post written halfway that goes over a list of about 20 different awesome sites for investors to check out that was going live next week… darn ;-).
Anyhow, here’s a couple that I found recently that are pretty useful for investors:
– http://www.city-data.com (great for market research and demographics)
– http://www.premierereo.com (cool site for searching REO properties)
– http://www.cyberhomes.com (kinda like zillow… but a bit different)
Thats a short list… I’ll share another 20 or so that rock w/ ya when I get the rest of the thingy written.
Chat soon Jp. Keep up the great work man!
– Trevor
@Trevor Mauch – Ha ha ha! Great minds indeed.
When you post yours I’ll link to it. Let me know! 🙂
…jp
http://www.city-data.com has already been mentioned but I just wanted to vote on it also.
The forums on CityData are awesome! You will usually find a ongoing very active thread in most cities on the current RE market. Very timely, filled with local buyers and sellers commenting.
I know of no better source for constant updating info on the LOCAL RE marketplace.
Kajiji.com (free classifieds)
Backpage.com (selling houses)
Photoshow.com (Create photoshow for property)
SalesTeamLive.com (Direct Marketing)
ContinentalMessage.com (Answering Service)
RingCentral.com (800 numbers & prerecorded Msg)
Kall8.com (Cheap 800 numbers)
Hey JP,
I love your site and email updates. I LOL’ed when I saw the Tim Mai banner ad for “fweedom!”
http://www.pasreo.com
Wells Fargo REO asset liquidation site for their foreclosed homes. I believe they may even finance the purchase if you buy from them, but users will need to research that further.
http://www.rentometer.com
A rental market “comp” site. Plug in an address, and some other apartment info, and it will give you the median rents for that market.
Later,
Tim
@Tim (ME) –
Tim, thanks for the love, man. And for adding the sites.
You and I need to enjoy another afternoon at a theme park near you sometime. 🙂
…jp
JP-
Your blog rocks! The best real estate blog on the net!
I ran across a site that is kindof a cool directory of real estate Web 2.0 sites.
http://www.1000wattconsulting.com/web2.0/
Some of the categories are:
FSBO
Home values/Markets/Investing
Listings/Search
Mapping
Marketing tools/platforms
Neighborhood/Local
Rentals
A resource that maybe worth a look.
-Dave
http://www.investorsloungeonline.com/ has a similar feature like postlet for members to list properties and syndicate across the real estate portals. It is free and all are welcome to try it out!
There are some new tools coming out in the new year as well!
http://www.investorsloungeonline.com/
Hello,
I think every real estate investor should visit John Reed’s website at:
http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html
and the Money magazine article on him at
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/12/real_estate/reguide_moneymag_reed_0606/index.htm
Christine
Hi JP –
What a great site. Thanks for all the information you provide for us investors!
Here are a few of my favorite sites to add to your list:
http://www.bluefieldscapital.com – hard money lender
http://www.mortgageexpo.com – can get tenant’s credit history
http://www.crazycheapsigns.com
http://www.gotvmail.com – voice mail system
http://www.patlive.com – voicemail and answering service
http://www.skype.com – free internet based phone calls, can purchase local numbers
http://www.irs.gov – tax info and forms (whether we like it or not)
http://www.cyberhomes.com (free comps, last sale info, neighborhood info)
http://www.netronline.com – comps
regards,
Bill
http://www.postlets.com is a great resource for building a professional looking post for craigslist. Just type in the info, click next and you can copy the http script for pasting into craigslist.
Easy peasy…
Love the topic JP!
cheers,
Taylor
@Christine – Christine, thanks for the submission of Reed’s site. But I’d like to also add that anything he puts out there should NOT be taken as gospel truth.
John Reed’s website isn’t non-guru. It’s ANTI-guru…which is funny b/c whether he admits it or not, he IS the same thing he flatly criticizes.
The fact of the matter is, Reed gets attention in two ways…
1) Being one of the earliest REI websites online gives him AMAZING search engine rankings for core keywords to our industry. So he gets a ton of drive-by internet traffic.
2) When people get there, he does all he can to “stir the pot”, point fingers and name-calling other educators. People are strangely drawn to negativity and sensationalism (just watch the news) so he gets a lot of attention and sticks in your mind.
It’s not that everything he says is wrong. Some of it’s spot-on…but it’s also mixed with self-serving falsities that are waaaay off base. And he thumbs his nose at anyone who challenges him.
Thanks for the submission though…Reed’s a character I encountered early on in my REI career and I just HAD to chime in with a little response here of my own. 🙂
Thanks again,
…jp
This youtube channel might be usefull though i have tailored it for Australian content there is dozens of great American investors as well. Almost 300 different videos added to favorites and various paylists and all categorized. From the great Donald Trump down to simple DIY videos and or Motivational stuf. It’s all about investing and it’s all 100% FREE. I maintain it myself so I sift any spam or anything like that and try to select only good vid’s, as I’m an investor as well. So I learn heaps from all these videos there tremendous!
http://uk.youtube.com/user/ForPropertyInvestors
Hey all,
Thanks for the awesome website suggestions. The Web 2.0 site is great!
JP – awesome blog. Super helpful and an overall great resource for investors.
Someone up there mentioned salesteamlive.com as a non-guru site to go to. But, I’m not entirely sure it is non-guru, it is owned by Gary Boomershine and has had the input of Dan Doran, Richard Roop and Cris Chico. I also hear they are working on getting several other Gurus to provide campaigns to their members.
The site is less of an information resource for investors and more of a service for investors. The company does all of the marketing an investor could need to get his phone ringing and it uses the methodology of some of the gurus to do it. I know this because I’ve been running their Cris Chico campaigns for over five months (with great success I must say). The nice part is that I don’t get all of these infomercial emails and big time sales pitches from them. Those confuse the hell out of me.
I found that one of the most important aspects of investing is to pick a deal type you’d like to do, find a great “Guru” to teach you the ropes (or teach yourself) and outsource your marketing to generate the leads for you. To be honest, I can’t quit my job to dedicate all of my resources to reading tons of educational handbooks and ebooks, go to seminars, manage the phones and visit sellers.
That’s just my .02.
Just found this blog by reading the Virtual Bird Dog Blueprint (couldn’t put it down…definitely a must read!!) and I am totally amazed at the honesty and no B.S. that everyone portrays in their comments.
Ok so now to my top non-guru real estate investing websites. They made my top list if they met two criteria: 1.) FREE or relatively inexpensive and 2.) Provided good sources of tools and information for real estate investing
1. Del.icio.us(http://del.icio.us/): Are you having a hard time keeping track of all the interesting web pages you find? Would you like access to your bookmarks from any computer? Then this is the perfect web tool! This social bookmarking site allows you to have all your bookmarks in one place that are stored online and you can share them with other people. The advantage to this site is that you can access your bookmarks on ANY computer. In addition, you can search and tag your bookmarks to help you keep track of your entire bookmark collection. No more organizing your bookmarks into folders!
Cost: FREE
2. Motivated Seller Leads (www.wehavehomeleads.com): It’s easy to make BIG MONEY in real estate when you have an endless supply of motivated seller leads. That is why I want to share a valuable resource with you for finding motivated seller leads that are desperately waiting to hear from you today. This is not your normal lead service. Instead of just getting a list of names and addresses, you get ACTUAL motivated sellers who have submitted a request to be called by an investor directly. It’s the difference between a HOT “lead” and cold “lead”. There are no contracts or long term commitments. If you don’t like their service, you just initiate a cancellation within the first 30 days before the trial ends.
Cost: $1 Trial for 30 days and $99.99 each month thereafter*
* To get your internet leads for only $1, make sure to enter “lr2008” in the promo
code box when you sign up
3. Rentometer (www.rentometer.com): Charging too little for rent? Paying too much for rent? Well look no further! By entering your rental information: address, city, state, zip, estimated monthly rent, bedrooms, and number of units, rentometer will analyze your property and let you know whether your rent is on target, overpriced, or too low. The advantage to this site is that it compares your rent against other rents in your area and gives you lowest, median, and highest rent based on the span of rental values in proximity to your address. No more guessing how much rent to charge!
Cost: FREE
4. Rentomatic (www.rentomatic.com): Managing your rental properties has never been easier with this site. This online rent-payment system saves you time and stress from billing, collecting and depositing rents. It’s easy, safe and low-cost. Fill your vacancies fast with ads that post to Craigslist, Rentometer, Google, and Oodle. I personally used this site to advertise my rental property and in less than a week had over 1,500 people view my ad on Craigslist (that’s not even including the other ads posted on google, oodle, and rentometer). The advantage of this site is that you can now automate those monthly, mundane tasks you hate to do. And more. Talk about property management simplified and affordable. Never again hear, “the check’s in the mail.”
Cost: FREE to use if you don’t automate the rents or $5/unit to automate the rents or if you have 5 units or higher, choose from one of their affordable monthly plans starting at $9.95.
5. Zoho Show (http://show.zoho.com): Everyone has to do a PowerPoint presentation sometime in their life. This online tool is used for making powerful presentations. Whether you are a professional, a teacher, a student, a businessman, a salesman or anyone looking to put together a cool presentation, you have come to the right place. Zoho Show’s pre-built themes, clipart, and shapes coupled with features like drag-and-drop makes it an easy application to use. The advantage to this site is you can edit, import, create, and publish PowerPoint presentations online. In addition, you can give a presentation to a client who is half a globe away. Who wouldn’t want to do their demos while at their seat!?!
Cost: FREE for personal use
6. Guru (www.guru.com): This user-friendly site provides businesses with the ability to find the help they need from a variety of talented Freelancers worldwide. Imagine your business needs a project completed (i.e. brochures, logo, website, etc.) but you don’t want to spend a lot of money to have it completed. By posting your project on this site, freelancers actually provide free competitive quotes allowing you the ability to award your project to the most competitive, cost effective freelancer. There is no obligation to hire. Afraid that they will run off with your money? Not a chance using this site. Once connected, you can securely pay freelancers through Guru.com’s SafePay system. By using SafePay Escrow, you are guaranteed 100% satisfaction with your project results.
Cost: FREE to post project, search for freelancers, and get free quotes – if you decide to actually have your project completed, then it will cost you (cost depends on project type and quotes from freelancers)
7. Tada List (www.tadalist.com): Scatterbrained? Disorganized? If you never can remember what tasks you have, Tada List will do it for you. It will help you keep track of whatever it is that you need to do and easily is accessible from any computer, wherever you are. You can create as many “to do” lists as you like or what not, and then track your items via RSS. For a step up, try Backpack (www.backpackit.com). It manages your tasks, but also allows you to set up pages to store important files, photos and the like.
Cost: FREE
8. Box (www.box.net): Do you need a place to store and manage your files but don’t want to carry a thumb drive around in your pocket? This simplified online file system is used by over 1,000,000 Individuals, Small Businesses, and Large Enterprises. Whether you are accessing your files from a remote computer, sending a large presentation or video to a client or relative, or collaborating with teammates on a work or school project, Box will become part of your everyday life. Do you need extended storage, large file sending, SSL encryption and password protection for your shared files? Upgrade and get these features easily while storing up to 15GB of files.
Cost: FREE to use lite version which allows you to store files up to 1GB then plans start at $7.95/month
9. TubeMogul (www.tubemogul.com): Instead of wasting TONS of your precious time up-loading one video to many different video sharing sites (where, by the way, viewers are always hungry for new videos), you just upload them at TubeMogul and BOOM, those videos are instantly uploaded to over a dozen video sharing sites just from your ONE account on TubeMogul. It also tracks how your videos are doing at those different sites so you can actually analyze the results.
Cost: FREE for personal use (deploy up to 150 videos/month)
10. Click2Mail (www.click2mail.com): The quick, easy, affordable way to create and mail postcards, brochures, letters, and more. It’s free-to-use Mailing Online Publisher offers a new approach to putting print back to work for your organization. Its Web browser-based tools provide all you need to manage your lists and to create, personalize, and proof your mailing pieces. It is a system that completely eliminates the need for sorting, labeling, applying postage, and delivery to a post office—they do it all for you for just a little more than you would normally pay for the postage alone.
Cost: Price is based on the format (postcard, flyer, booklet, letter, etc.) and the number you print. Example: Compose and mail 10 postcards to 10 different addresses for under $5 (less than 50 cents per piece – all costs included)
P.S. Tell me what you HONESTLY think…love to get feedback whether good 🙂 or bad 🙁
@Lauren – Lauren, some excellent resources! Thank you! I’ve never heard of Zoho before…what a cool tool!
…jp
http://myNextRehab.com is similar to craigslist, but has an email element added to it. Wholesalers post their deals and an email is sent out to the buyers who are interested in that area. The posting sits out there for anyone to view (like craigslist)… the cost is $0 for posting and $0 for joining the VIP Buyers List
PS – reitips.com looks awesome! I’m afraid it is going to be a big time killer for me 🙂
Great free site to start your bird dog program for enlisting people to find properties for you cheaply.
http://www.cloudcontacts.com/ – Do you have a wad of business cards? I know you have one right? Just about every person I know have one. Well, now you can easily take those business cards and get ALL of them data entered so you can simply add to your email, database or your favorite contact directory just $30
http://www.echosign.com – I don’t know how many of you have considered Digital Signatures but I’m really liking this site. Some of the cool features besides the fact that you can upload any document and sign it as well as get other peoples signatures…are that it acts like a document storage and organizer. You can view the documents on the site without having to open Adobe Reader. It also will allow you to have people fax into your account & converts the faxes to PDF’s which can then be emailed where they need to go. I love this! I don’t know how many of you use e-fax but I’ve heard people have trouble with it. I can also have people send documents to a unique email address that automatically stores the document and sends me an email when a document has been stored. I don’t know how many times I’ve opened an email and thought, “I’ll download this document in a minute.” Then it goes to my old mail & I forget about it & it eventually expires. I even forward emails that have attachments to that email address, then I know they are always there to view. They’ve got some really cool accolades from some top companies like IBM etc. They also have an archive of the Esign Act passed in 2000 that provides legal documentation for Esigning. Apparently, President Bush Esigned the 2007 Budget. Pretty cool if you ask me. The best part is it’s only $12.95/mo.
http://www.protmc.com – As a busy real estate professional your days are spent answering calls, following up on leads, negotiating offers and viewing properties. Additionally, you have to make sure that the deals you have under contract are moving along or……….No One Will Get Paid! The Online Closing Team at TMC is always ready to Manage the Details of any real estate transaction from contract to close (virtual closing coordinator). You no longer need to worry about collating reams of paperwork for your files.
http://www.primopdf.com/ – A FREE PDF creator? No way but it’s true! Create PDF files optimized for print, screen, ebook, or prepress. Convert any document to PDF from any file you can print including Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.
Here’s a free real estate training website.
http://realestate.bryanellis.com/
http://mapthis.com/map.php?id=4c27cea8526af8cfee3be5e183ac9605
in beta testing….
mapquest on steroids. can copy/paste up to 100 addresses into system and will give you map/route to use in your vehicle gps.
if you view lots of properties in 1 setting, it helps determine area (good/bad), and driving route in 1 shot. Also provides directions if needed. Great tool for investors looking at buying multiple properties.
Mapthis.com is also developing an “auto route” function that will automatically tell you where you need to stop 1,2,3 etc based on all addresses entered.
I just discovered http://www.RealEstateShows.com
“Use your own digital photos to create stunning internet commercials for your properties in less than 5 minutes.”
Only $125 for unlimited use for a year. Ideal for Realtors or investors who deal in the retail arena a lot (like rehabbers).
Here’s another one for the list – these guys do market research for emerging market / recovering market investors – great free stuff and a really informative newsletter. They have a very well done blog too….
http://RedfishEmergingMarkets.com
With 5000 real estate investing members and no fees to join I thought you’d have posted this one yourself JP! http://WWW.MAGICBULLETS.COM
Good post brother.
You rock Lauren,
great info!
thanks
website/ blog with some good forums.
This is a good site about mobile home investing:
http://www.adventuresinmobilehomes.com
http://www.ContinentalMessage.com – Live answering service. They can integrate directly with realeflow, other CRMs.