(upbeat music)
- [Seth] Hey guys what's up.
This is Seth from the Retipster blog.
In this video I want to let you know
about a tool I discovered a little while back
that is just unbelievably helpful.
It's not a free tool.
It's something that you actually
have to download and integrate with Google Earth.
But when you see what it can do
I think you'll see what I mean
in that in a lot of cases it may very well
be worth paying money for this
because it's just like staggering
how much information it can provide
and how useful it can be depending
on what part of the country you work in.
As you can see right here I've got Google Earth
pulled up and there's a website called Real Estate Portal.
The first time I heard about this website
was probably about a year or so ago.
They have this app that's called LandGlide
that you can go ahead and download
for your iPhone or your droid and basically
it's a mobile app that you can use
to do high level property research
on a lot of different areas in the country.
The reason I didn't find it particularly helpful
was because usually when I'm doing
this research I'm sittin' down at my desktop computer
and it's a lot easier to do it that way.
I don't really use my phone
when I'm doing that kind of work.
However, there is a different product they have
which is called Parlay 2.0.
This is a similar product.
What it does is it gives you a downloadable file
called a kmz file.
A kmz file is basically just
a collection of kml files.
A kml file, if you're not familiar with that,
is a file that can be integrated with Google Earth
to put all kinds of different overlays
over the map.
So you could see like parcel information.
You could see buildings.
You can see image overlays.
You can see power grids, water lines.
All kinds of stuff can be used with kml files.
But the reason I would use a kml file
is mostly to find where parcel lines are
and then find just some basic information
about those parcels.
That's exactly what this can do.
In order to get this you actually
have to register for an account,
which is very easy.
You just give them your email address
and a password.
It's a pretty straightforward procedure.
I've already got an account
so I'm just gonna go ahead and log in
and show you how this works.
Once you've logged in you can go ahead
and click here.
What it's gonna do is it's going to download
this kmz file and once you've got that file
you can go over here to Google Earth
and then in Google Earth we're gonna
go up here to file, open.
Then we're gonna find that file
that we just downloaded and go ahead and open it.
This is where it is right here.
Now what's happened here, if we go down here
to places and click on this.
What this is gonna do is show us
a lot of different layers that have just
been added to Google Earth because
of this Parlay kmz file that we just added.
When you first sign up for your account
and download this, I think it's like
a 14 day free trial that you get.
After that if you want access to it
you can either pay monthly for it or annually for it.
I think the annual subscription is about,
yeah the annual subscription is 299.99 per year,
so 300 bucks a year.
If you want to pay quarterly it's 100 bucks per quarter.
It's not necessarily free or cheap.
However, I want to show you what this does
because it's pretty remarkable.
This is basically a massive set of data
that we've just imported to Google Earth.
The way that this works is that
this real estate portal has different sets
of information for most of the counties
in the United States.
It's a lot of information.
I mean parcel ID's, owner names,
property addresses, mailing addresses,
lots of different stuff.
It kind of varies a little bit
depending on the county.
Some of the counties have more data than others.
I want to just show you what this looks like.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit
and if we go to really just any county here.
Let's find one, I don't know, in Illinois
and see what we got.
Everywhere you see these little green outlines,
those are counties where Parlay is giving you
a set of data.
If we just pick this one here.
We'll zoom in.
Now these squares you see here
are the different townships, I believe.
If we zoom in further here.
Let's just, I don't know, go here.
Once we get close enough we start
to see these parcel lines.
If we just go ahead and click on any one of these.
Let's just click on this one for example.
This is telling us the name of the owner,
the acreage of the property, zip code,
legal description, the mailing address of this owner.
If we want to we can go ahead and click
on this parcel ID number and sometimes
I've actually found that usually
I get this message where it doesn't
actually link me directly to the county's website
or it gives more information about that property.
But it explains what you can do
to go ahead and try to do that.
Sometimes it will link directly to that county's website,
though usually from what I've seen
it just shows you this little page.
Even absent more information.
This little set of data is actually like very very helpful.
The cool thing is, rather than you having
to go ahead and manually draw these lines
on here with a polygon tool
which is the free way to do it,
you've actually got these property lines right here.
You can go ahead and do this kind of thing
and look at it on an angle.
If you want to you can go ahead
and draw the polygon line on top of those lines right there.
It would basically just be a much simpler,
easier way to make sure you're getting those lines
as close as possible to reality.
The cool thing is here, let's go ahead
and zoom out.
There is a lot of information here.
If we go back here to the website
and we go here to the products page
and then click on this and then
we can see this map right here.
This actually show us all the coverage in the country.
Some of these counties don't have any data.
Everywhere where you see that it's green
they've got these sets of data.
Where it doesn't necessarily have everything,
but it has a lot of information
that's gonna be very useful to you.
Another reason why this could
be really helpful is I know sometimes
in my home state for example,
there have been a number of counties
that I basically have refused to work in
because the county does not provide
any GIS mapping system or if they do
it's something I have to like buy
from them directly and then they
have to send it to me.
I know sometimes I've seen prices
of like 1500 bucks just for one kml file
from one county.
Whereas with this system it gives me
a lot of that information for almost every county out there.
In terms of getting those GIS maps
which are extremely important in my profession
as a land investor because without
those parcel lines I don't really know
where the property is that I'm getting.
This provides that in many of the counties out there.
Say if we were to go up here.
Let's check out Traverse City,
see what kind of information we can pull up here.
This is a county, I've actually never
even worked here before.
Some of the information it will give you,
assuming that information is in the database
is everywhere where you see a house here,
that means the property is zoned residential.
Everywhere you see a shopping cart,
I believe that means it's zoned commercial.
Anyplace you see this little box
with an X in it, I think that's usually
like some kind of state or government owned property.
Just really helpful information.
From my perspective one of the most important things
on here is just being able to see
those property lines and also see
the ownership of it and when the information
is available, seeing the mailing addresses
of the owners and the acreage.
Sometimes you'll even see like the transfer value
and the transfer date and all kinds of stuff here
that's really helpful.
Depending on what state and what county
you're working in and what information
you need access to, versus the information
that's available for free online,
this could be a super, super helpful thing
to use in your business.
When it comes to property research
and just finding out some of the basic information
about certain lots or properties
before you buy them, this could just
be immensely helpful.
Given that the information is available
in so many places around the country
and the annual cost is about 300 bucks,
honestly I think that's kind of a steal.
I've talked to several counties that charge thousands
for the data just in their county.
I think if you're working in one county
all the time and that's all you ever work,
then it may be worth it.
But if you're like me where you're working
in multiple counties, sometimes multiple states
all over the country and you need more
of a broader scope of just some basic information,
this could be a super, super helpful tool
to have at your disposal in your business.
The price is really not that bad.
Anyway I just wanted to make sure
you knew about that really helpful resource.
I'm definitely not gettin' paid
by this company to tell you this stuff.
I just found it awhile ago and I thought
it was seriously valuable for pretty much
anybody who's working in the same kind
of business that I am whether
it's just real estate investing
or property research or land investing in general.
I think it's pretty awesome.
If it's something you're gonna use
on a regular basis the cost is really
not that bad when you think about
all the information it brings to the table.
Hopefully that's something you can put
to work in your business.
Thanks for watchin' and I'll talk to you later.