Hey guys, what's going on? It’s Seth here.
In this video, I want to show you how to do property research with another software tool
called PropStream.
Now, if you followed REtipster for any length of time, you may already know that I've used
some other data services, kind of like this in the past.
And PropStream has certain things it brings to the table that those other services can't do.
And vice versa.
Some of those other services can do things that PropStream isn't really well equipped to do.
So I want to help you understand what PropStream is for, who it's for, where it excels.
So I'm going to go ahead and log in here, and show you how it works.
So once you log in, you're going to see a dashboard like this.
There's actually going to be more than one video I'm going to do about PropStream.
This particular one is going to going to show how to do research on one specific property.
So if you're trying to do some due diligence, understand the area, understand property values,
understand the transaction history and a lot of the specifics about one single property.
That's what we're going to dive into here.
And in another video I'm going to show you how you can pull lists from this service
and do some kind of ninja things that you can't do with other data services
that you can use to pull lists.
There's also a really great mobile app that PropStream has.
If you have a PropStream subscription, the use of their mobile app is free,
and it's pretty sweet.
Again, I'm going to show you that in a separate video,
but for this one, we're just going to dive into individual property research.
And I think the overall experience and usefulness of PropStream varies a little bit
depending on what type of property you're trying to research.
I think for most real estate investors out there, they're going after like houses
and improved properties with structures on them.
If that's the kind of real estate investor you are, you're going to find this extremely useful.
If you're a vacant land investor, like I am, you're still going to find it useful,
but there's a couple things about it
there are a little bit less useful, less intuitive, but that doesn't mean it's not useful at all.
There are still some things to be aware of and to know about this.
So just to start out, I'm going to show you an example of how you would go about researching
like a normal single-family house and what kind of information you can pull out of this software.
So what I'm going to do here is just type in kind of a random county.
I know of one in Florida. Orange County, Florida. Go ahead and click on this
and it will bring us there.
It'll kind of just show us this map of all kinds of stuff going on.
It's because we haven't gotten very specific yet about which property we're going after.
Another way to do this.
If you had a specific address in mind, I could have just typed that address right in there.
So I'm going to grab this address right here.
I don't know anything about this house I'm just picking it at random.
Let's go ahead and put it in there and click on this result.
And it will show us that house.
We can see the little green pin there surrounded by all these other red pins.
These are similar properties in the immediate vicinity.
You also see some stuff up here which pertains a lot more to pulling lists.
And again, that's not really what we're going to talk about in this video.
So what we can do is go over here to click on details
and we're going to see a ton of information here.
And one thing about PropStream that is unique is that it pulls from multiple sources of data.
Unlike a service like DataTree that is really just pulling from one source
PropStream is pulling from a bunch of those databases, including the local MLS as well.
And this applies to pretty much all the markets throughout the US where PropStream works.
And I will say it doesn't work everywhere.
Like for example, if I was trying to search for stuff in North Dakota, I probably wouldn't
have a whole lot of luck, but assuming you're searching in the majority of the country where
the data is available you're going to see a lot of information here.
So first of all, this property detail report, we can see just a lot of the basic details,
like the address, total number of bedrooms and bathrooms, all the basic stuff that
you would normally expect to see in this kind of report.
We can see the assessed value information, partial number, legal description.
When we click over here to MLS details.
So this is where it stares to get interesting, especially if you are not a licensed agent,
this is one way to get MLS access without being an agent.
And I will say this MLS data isn't immediately updated from the local MLS.
I think usually it's like 24 to 72 hours after the fact.
So if a property sells this morning, you may not see that information reflected here,
but it's usually going to be pretty current and accurate a lot more so than a lot of your
standard data services, which can run days or weeks or months behind in some cases.
So this is pretty useful.
And I've actually heard stories of licensed agents who do have MLS access on their own,
but they use PropStream anyway because their own native MLS system doesn't give them
the tools and features to sort out information and find information the way that PropStream does.
So even if you are a licensed agent, this could be really useful to you.
And then if we move on here to comparable and nearby listings, PropStream by default
is going to identify what it thinks might be reasonable comps in the near vicinity.
And as usual, whenever you're trusting a computer to do things for you, you don't want to just
blindly accept that as truth.
You probably want to look at this stuff and verify that it's actually correct,
but still, it can potentially save you a lot of time just in pulling in a lot of those comparables
that might work.
We can also see tax information over here, which is pulled from the local municipality.
So you can understand what the property tax bills are each year
and when we go to linked properties.
So these are other properties that are owned by the same owner.
If we go back over here and see the owner name is ABE PROPERTY GROUP INC
over here, look at this. ABE PROPERTY GROUP INC
And it shows how long they've owned it.
And this can be a really useful way to buy from portfolio owners in a lot of cases.
I know this happens a lot in the land business where you'll find one person
who has one property to sell, but they also happen to own like 20 other properties
And guess what? They want to sell all of them.
So this can be a really useful way to just uncover a lot of that information really quickly
And then mortgage and transaction history.
You can understand, "Hey, is there a mortgage on this property?"
And how long has it been outstanding and what was the amount for?
And you can even click on this stuff.
So if you want to actually see the document itself, I won't say this is like doing
a full blown title search, but you can at least look at the original mortgage documentation
or the deed documentation, that information is available.
And it does cost you something like in this case, it's going to be five bucks
to purchase this one document.
But when you look at the cost of most title searches or just looking at this information
from a title company, it's going to be way more than that.
So it's not that bad of a deal.
If you want to just take a quick look at any of these documents for whatever reason,
go ahead and open this thing up here.
And there we go.
Here's a copy of the warranty deed.
So it's super convenient to have that available. And over here in documents and reports
we can see a summary of a lot of the different documents that are of record and available.
We can purchase the assessors map if we want to.
And if we are a house flipper or even a house wholesaler, and we want to show people
the ARV and what the formula looks like after rehab costs are included, it gives us access
to this rehab calculator as well, which I'm not really going to get into here in this video.
And then if we go over here to the analysis page, so we can basically
analyze a deal right here with this calculator if we want to.
Say, if we're looking to buy this as a rental property or as a flip
or anything like that, we can input all of our numbers and crunch the numbers right here
in PropStream.
So that's pretty useful.
We can also print this thing as a report and it basically just saves it as a PDF.
And when we open that PDF, we can take a look at all the information in one place,
pretty much all the stuff I just showed you nicely in this PDF.
So whether we're an agent or an investor or a wholesaler or a house flipper,
whether we want to save this for ourselves or share this with a partner
or share this with a potential customer,
we have all this information right here, compiled very neatly and professionally.
So again, if you're a real estate investor who is into houses or building or anything like that
it's going to be super helpful to have this information.
And I haven't even gotten into like the skip tracing and the marketing and campaigns
and website stuff that you can also build with PropStream.
That's like a whole other subject.
It is loosely related to this issue of property research.
But I think it has more to do with pulling lists and doing direct mail campaigns.
So I'm going to get that a little bit more in a separate video, but as you can see,
just from this PropStream can be extremely useful for you.
Not just because it compiles all that data so well, but it also has access and pulls from
so many different sources of data, like the MLS, like the local municipality,
like these other property ownership databases that are nationwide.
It just gives you a lot of information really easily.
Now I will say that one of the gripes that I have about it is that it doesn't show you
where it's pulling the data from.
I think sometimes it's obvious.
Like for example, when you click on the MLS details, it's probably pulling it from the MLS
not some other database, but when I'm looking at property details,
I don't know if that's come from the MLS
or some other property ownership database or the municipality.
I don't really know that.
And why is that important?
Because not all of these databases are kept current to the day in all counties throughout
the country.
In fact, I've seen some counties and some databases that are literally years old
and it's really helpful to be able to see when the data was last refreshed
so that you know if you're working with current data or not.
And luckily PropStream does give you a way to see this and I'll show you how we can do that.
So if we go back here and just search Orange County again, when we see this page right here
if we click on this little arrow, it will expand it into something that looks kind
of like a spreadsheet.
Then over here, we can see this last updated column and it will go down and just tell us
when the data was last refreshed from wherever it came from.
And unfortunately, we don't know where it came from, but we can see the date at which
it was last updated, which is really helpful.
And I'm recording this right now as of December 21.
And we can see you that this was updated within the past week here.
And I think this is what you'll usually see, especially in markets like Orange County,
which is a huge market.
It might not be so current in like super rural areas where the data is a little bit more spotty
but either way, at least it does give you a way to check and verify.
So you don't just have to blindly trust it.
And now that I've shown you the process for doing some basic research on a single-family home
in just a normal area of the country, I'm going to show you what the process looks
like when you're researching vacant land.
And this is particularly applicable to all my vacant land investors out there,
including myself, because vacant land is kind of like the redheaded stepchild that a lot of
real estate investors don't understand and don't care to understand.
And it's evident to me, at least at the time of this recording, that PropStream was made
primarily for people who are looking at improved properties, homes, buildings, that kind of thing.
It still works for land, but there's certain things missing that would be really helpful
that aren't there.
And it still is certainly helpful for land investors.
Don't get me wrong about that, but I'm just going to show you a little bit about
the experience of trying to find a vacant land property.
So in order to do that, first of all, you have to know either the address of that property
or the parcel number.
And as most land investors know a lot of vacant land properties literally do not have an address
because one has not been assigned to them yet, in order to find the property,
you have to know the county, the state and the parcel number of that property.
And as you can see from this search bar, that is one option you can use to search for properties
either by entering the county, city, zip code or APN number.
But in order to search by the APN number, you have to type it in very, very specifically.
And if you get a single character wrong, PropStreamis not going to understand it
and it's not going to be able to find it.
So I'll show you how to do this.
We'd have to type in very specifically APN and then hashtag and then paste in the parcel
number and notice while I'm doing this is just saying no data.
So at this point I feel like, okay, I'm searching for something that's not there,
but if we put a comma here and then put the county name
and another comma, now note that it still says no data.
So it's still a little confusing, but then we type in the state abbreviation, boom, there we go.
Now it recognizes it.
So once we got that in there, we just go ahead and click on this result.
It's going to take us right there.
And similar to before we can see this green pin is the subject property.
If we zoom in here, not seeing any parcel lines, parcel lines, do show up in a lot of
areas, but for some reason they're not shown up here, must just be missing that data from
the database.
But if we click on details here, it shows us a lot of the same information that we would
normally see for a house, but there's some oddities to this, at least when you compare it
to how this works with something like DataTree or RealQuest or some of these other
data services out there.
So you'll notice here, it says occupancy, occupied.
What? This is a vacant lot.
How can it be occupied?
Then it says owner status, non-owner occupied.
So what does it mean when it's occupied and not occupied at the same time?
Well, apparently owner status non-owner occupied.
That basically means it is an absentee owned property, but when we see occupied here,
but next to occupancy, what that's talking about is how the US postal service defines occupied,
which means that the person is actually receiving and responding to their mail.
It's not a non-deliverable address.
And the address that they're referring to is this address here,
which is not even in the same state.
So this person lives away far away from the property.
But the address that they receive mail at is a correct address where they are
and they're receiving mail there.
So that's what they mean by occupied, which is totally not intuitive to me, but apparently
that's how PropStream defines that here.
So it's just important to understand that when you see the word occupied.
And sometimes you'll see the word "vacant" here next to occupancy,
and that basically means that a person is
not responding to their mail there.
Now this tells us like the length of ownership, which is really interesting to know
it tells us the purchase method.
Apparently, this was financed somehow perhaps through seller financing or something like that.
You can see a lot of basic information here, but again, because this is a vacant lot,
there's not a whole lot of information to talk about.
There's no bedrooms or bathrooms or square feet or anything like that,
but we can see the lot size.
We can see the school district subdivision name, assess value, the market land value,
which really doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of what this thing is actually worth.
That's just based on the municipalities assessment of things.
And now when we move over to comparables and nearby listings, so as can be expected with
vacant land, there's not a whole lot to look at here.
There's only one in this case.
And it did sell for $69,000 in the past year.
And if we want to, we can click on this comp and look at the details of that one to try
to understand is this inappropriate comp or not.
And, interestingly, it's like the exact same size.
That's good to know, and it's not too far away.
And a lot of the information looks pretty similar to who are subject property.
So it could very well be a good comp, but even so it's only one and it's hard to draw a whole
lot of conclusions from a single comp, but nonetheless PropStream did find it.
And it does appear to be an appropriate comp.
And if we wanted to, we could also go down here and adjust the distance from this property
to say a one mile or five miles, even if we wanted to, I'm not going to mess with that here
but just keep in mind.
If you are looking for comps, it is an option to look further out from that 0.5 miles
PropStream gives you by the fault.
If we move on here to tax information, we can see the annual property tax bill.
And as for linked properties, there's evidently no other properties in the area that this person owns
Mortgage and transaction history.
We can just see the date of the deed transfer so we can see that according to this anyway
there seems to be a clear chain of title.
And I hesitate to say that this is the same as a title search because it's not,
but still, it can just summarize a lot of this information pretty quickly for you.
I know, like in DataTree, for example, it might show you the previous owner,
but it's not going to go like decades into history and show you all those transfers.
Whereas PropStream will actually show you a lot of that information if it's there
and we can go over here to documents and reports and the analysis tab.
So this might apply, but probably if you're following the typical land flipping business
model of buying stuff super cheap, it's just vacant land.
It probably isn't going to be as useful for you, but still it's there.
If for some reason you want to use that.
And if we want to save this to a property group, which we can then use later on to do
skip tracing and that kind of thing we can, or we can just ignore it and move on.
But that's just a quick overview of how to do this kind of property research in PropStream.
And again, PropStream has a pretty sweet mobile app that I've been pretty impressed with.
You can do pretty much everything I just showed you from your phone.
And in some ways, I think it's actually even a little bit easier to do this from your phone.
So if you're somebody who's on the road a lot and you're on the fly and you need to
pull up property information really quickly, whether it's for your own benefit
or to share it with somebody else or to send somebody a report or anything like that,
even if you're somebody who's driving for dollars and you drive by a property
and you're like, hey, I want to see who owns that property.
I want to get their phone number.
I want their email address.
I want to send them a postcard right now.
You can do that from the mobile app.
It's pretty sweet.
So again, I'm going to have a separate video explaining the mobile app a little bit better
and a separate video explaining how to generate lists through PropStream as well,
which you can use for direct mail and a lot of different stuff.
I think a lot of you're actually going to find that one particularly interesting.
So be sure to check out that one as well, but just in terms of the property research function
what's the final verdict on this?
Do I think it's worth the money to pay for this kind of ongoing subscription for access
to this kind of data and this format?
Well, I think it kind of depends on what you're trying to research,
what kind of real estate investor you are.
I think certainly any kind of real estate investor, even if you're like a note investor
or an appraiser or a realtor or a banker or an insurance company,
all these people can probably find some value in PropStream.
And I think it's actually important not to lose sight of that, because there's a lot
of other industries that are loosely related to real estate where people pay for this
kind of service because they need to see property ownership, data and mortgage data
and comparable data and all that stuff.
And PropStream has all of that.
So there's a lot of value to go on for everybody, but say like if you are a land investor, for example
and PropStream wasn't necessarily built first and foremost for the land investing
industry and profession, even then I do think PropStream would be a good option
to have available as like a side arm.
If you can afford a second one, it's great to have this data because again, it gets pulled
from multiple sources and it's a really good way to crosscheck the information
that you're seeing in one place to make sure "Is that correct?"
"Are there any inconsistencies? Is there anything that I'm not seeing from source number one?"
Because there usually will be something that you'll find when you're looking at a secondary
source like this. And the fact that PropStream isn't just pulling from one database,
but multiple databases I think is really useful.
And if you are a real estate investor, like 98% of them out there that focuses on houses
and buildings, then yes, absolutely.
I think PropStream is a slam dunk value proposition.
And the cool thing is it's not that expensive considering you can pull up
to 10,000 leads per month as part of that subscription.
And you can pay for more if you want, but a lot of other data services will make you
pay per lead that you get, which can get very, very expensive.
And PropStream also doesn't require like a 12-month commitment, for example,
it's just month to month.
So if you decide you don't want it, you can cut and run at any point.
And it's not like you're locked in for a year at a time, which is really nice.
And REtipster does have an affiliate relationship with PropStream.
If you guys want to check it out through our affiliate link,
it'll help support the REtipster community retipster.com/propstream.
And I'll have a link to that beneath this video.
You can also sign up for this seven-day free trial, which kind of makes it a no brainer
to at least give it a try because you can see, "Hey, is this going to work for me?"
"Can I find the information I need and the markets where I'm working?"
And if you can't then just don't continue.
But if it is working for you, you will kind of know before you have to sign up and pay for anything.
So again, I'm going to have a link to that beneath the video.
Again, be sure to check out the other couple videos I have on PropStream
regarding how to pull lists and how the mobile app works.
I think you'll find those things really enlightening as well.
Thanks for watching.
Talk to you again soon.