Real Estate Hacker Rating: 
This week I took SmartZip.com for a spin. SmartZip offers independent investment ratings for real estate. The site currently only offers ratings in California and Florida. SmartZip uses quantitative analysis to create a SmartScore for residential investment property. In fact, it creates 2 scores one focused on the growth real estate investor and the other focused on the income approach investor. Think of these as rating growth stocks and dividend stocks.
The site offers a simple search bar on the main page and upon a sample search for “Orlando, FL” the site delivers the user to a map overview of several properties. These properties are in order of the highest rated first according to the “home score”, which is geared more towards the growth real estate investor. Looking further into the detail property view of the first SFR ratings are assigned based on many factors including schools, crime, demographics, job growth, and more.
After crunching the numbers a bit I tend to agree with the SmartScore, mostly. I’m familiar with the location of the first property and it is in one of the highest crime neighborhoods in Orlando. Although the site assigned a “1 star” rating for crime, I don’t believe they’ve weighted this significantly enough. One stolen AC condenser or interior cabinet theft and you could kill an entire year of cash flow. Also typically in high crime areas you can nearly double your vacancy assumptions, not to mention high cost of turnover. However SmartZip does a good job of trying to quantify the art of real estate investing.
I’m sure they crunch tons of data a national roll out will take considerable time. Additionally their “Town Hall” seems to be struggling. This is SmarZip’s approach to an online community. It looks like they’ve implemented a Ning site as their community which I observed there being no shortage of spam in the comment areas. Overall SmartZip has taken real estate investment analysis to a new level by trying to quantify many factors. I’d like to see their monetization plan which I’m sure offers some sort of referral model for people who are interested in properties listed. SmartZip is a venture backed company. I’m sure we’ll see the monetization plan soon.
I’m impressed with SmartZip as it is the best analysis engine of its kind I’ve seen. It will be interesting to see how this relatively new field of real estate investment analysis plays out. Other competitors like FinestExpert.com have recently popped up. I give SmartZip 3.5 out of 5 Stars.
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Ryan,
I believe that http://FinestExpert.com was the first to develop and release a quantative analysis for residential investment property. “This proprietary, first-of-its-kind scoring system boils all the financial data down to a single number to rate the investment potential of every property.”
Also, they perform property analysis nationwide. “By pre-analyzing these properties every day and performing all the necessary financial calculations, FinestExpert.com shows you at a glance those properties that truly pencil out, and most closely meet your investment goals.”
It would be interesting to read your review of FinestExpert.com and in a separate post a compare and contrast. The other site, now defunct I believe, was Krunching.com
Tom, I've recently gotten familiar with FinestExpert.com. In fact, I really like what they are doing with applying the metrics into real estate investment decisions nationwide.
Agree that it is a step ahead of SmartZip.com.
Hope to find some time to write a review sometime soon!
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