QUOTE (Jack @ Dec 22 2008, 10:20 PM) When analyzing an area to invest, do you all do much of the legwork yourselves, or do most simply follow REIN`s recommendations (Top-10 Towns, etc.)?
If much is done yourself, what are the filters that you use? And what kind of sources do you use? Where do you get your most valuable information on said town(s)?
we look at many many print and online sources and look for: in-migration, wage growth, rent growth, price/door, CAP rates, price/door over time .. and once a city is identified we use ZIP code specific data in the US and local experts to weed the class C areas from the class B neighborhoods. We have a ton of data on our website, plus more proprietary (often paid for) data. There is more data in the US than Canada available by ZIP code, say, as opposed to Postal Code driven data on wages, race %, minorities, age, ...
in the micro-location we look for: schools, parks, transportation, shopping malls, grocery stores, universities/colleges .. both existing and coming in the next 2-3 years
Often I have a certain price/door target that I am willing to pay, say 75/door in Edmonton .. that today does not yield much fruit so we wait patiently or buy in another city like Yorkton, SK where we bought serveral assets for 30`s and 40`s/door over the last 2 years .. so price in apartment assets is a key issue, and harder to come by than in single-family as the inventory of apartment buildings for sale is so much smaller than 1000`s of single family homes say in Calgary or Regina or Edmonton !
sample data here:
http://www.prestprop.com/tx.html or
http://www.prestprop.com/ab.html