Hey, what's going on? It's Seth here from retipster.com.
In this video I want to show you a really helpful tool
that I've used for a long time now.
It's super helpful really anytime you're trying to use
Google Earth or Google Maps to try to find a property.
It's particularly helpful if you're working in the vacant land business in any capacity
because as you probably know, if you've ever worked with vacant land,
a lot of these properties do not have a physical registered street address.
Like there's no address you can just type in the information
and it's going to find it as if it was a house.
When you're dealing with land,
it's really important to understand not only where the property is
but what the boundaries are, what the size is, if it has road access,
a lot of those attributes.
And it's a pretty easy way to get this parcel data
and just layer it in top of Google Earth
so it's all in one place and it's just really easy to see.
This can be helpful not only for your own due diligence,
but also when you're creating property listings.
You can take screenshots from Google Earth with the parcel lines on it,
just so that a prospective buyer can see very clearly,
"Oh, okay. That's what the parcel looks like."
And by the way, this can be found in DataTree or AgentPro 247
or sometimes even for free on your county's website.
But the drawback to that is that first of all,
these services either costs a lot of money in their own right
or like it's another thing that you have to log into to get the information.
And it's also not always possible to use Google Earth's capabilities
where you can like tilt the Earth at a 45-degree angle or rotate around it.
Sometimes you can do that, but usually there's just more limitations
if you're only relying on those data services.
And if you have the flexibility to just layer the parcel lines right on Google Earth,
it's just a lot you can do with that.
So the software that I'm talking about, it's like a subscription software.
It's called Parlay 2.0.
It's from a company called Report All.
This is also the same company that offers another mobile app called LandGlide.
Maybe you've heard of that, maybe not,
but it's a similar thing where you can take your phone
and go out to the property on site
and see those parcel lines respective to where you are by that property.
So that's another cool product.
But again, Parlay 2.0 has nothing to do with your phone.
You just use this on your desktop or laptop computer
in conjunction with Google Earth to find the property parcel lines.
So I'm going to have a link beneath this video.
I don't have any kind of affiliate relationship with them.
I'm just telling you about this because it's helpful.
So I've already got an account with this website,
so I'm going to show you how you can download the file
and upload it to Google Earth and see how it works.
And also, by the way, you can see a coverage map
of how many parts of the United States are covered with this parcel data.
And you'll see there are some spots in the most rural parts
of the country that do not have parcel maps.
So it's not like this is going to work everywhere.
It's just going to work in most places.
And if you go down here you can check out the pricing.
The one I've always used is this one right here
where you can pay basically $300 annually for access to it.
And that's an automatic subscription you'd have to pay every single year.
So it's not a buy one time thing.
But as you can imagine, this data does change in time.
So it is actually one of those things that probably make sense
to continue paying for if you want it to be accurate.
So assuming you have an active subscription,
and if you don't yet, you can do it just by heading down over here
where it says "Order Parlay" and follow the prompts.
But assuming you've got an active subscription
all you have to do is click this thing right here
and it will download a CAM Z file.
And then once that's downloaded,
you can just click it and drag it right over here to Google Earth
and you'll see this thing right here where it says,
Welcome Seth, your subscription is active.
Zoom in to view parcels.
So in order to start using Parlay,
the first thing you need to know is approximately where you're going.
And probably the biggest like I guess disappointment
I have with the product, for lack of a better word,
is that you can't really search for a property based on the owner name
or the parcel number within the county and state of where it is.
You kind of have to already know what the coordinates are
or the property address or the address next door.
Because if you don't have that it doesn't allow you to search based on that criteria.
So usually what I would do is I would either get that property address if it exists
or I would look up what the coordinates are in a service like DataTree or AgentPro.
And then once you've got that,
it's just a matter of either typing in those coordinates here and hitting search
or you can just zoom in to wherever you think it is approximately.
So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in over here to California.
Just to kind of show you how this works and what it looks like.
As we start zooming in closer,
eventually you'll start to notice that parcel lines start appearing.
And that is Parlay 2.0 part of work.
Because those parcel lines would not be there
if we didn't have this parlay product integrated and working with Google Earth.
So if I go over here and hit this checkbox and uncheck it,
you'll notice all those parcels disappear.
And the reason it's helpful to have this,
especially with properties that we're looking at right here,
is that, it just allows you to see pretty quickly
whether a property has road access.
And especially if there's any like terrain issues.
And this happens a lot out West when there's mountains
and just land that isn't completely flat.
You can see how those variations in the ground and elevation affect the parcel.
Like you can see how this one has like a little mountain right in the middle of it.
And this one over here has
I don't know if that's a river or what that is
or some kind of a goalie going right through it.
And this is stuff that you really couldn't see
if you were just looking at it directly from above.
And that's usually how it shows on one of these data services
like DataTree or AgentPro.
It doesn't really give you that perspective where you can see the parcel lines
in conjunction with like the tilting of the Earth.
So you can really see how that affects the parcel itself.
And you'll also notice when you zoom in close enough,
you see these little icons start to show on each property.
That house icon, when you click on it,
it'll show you some helpful information
like the county and the state, the municipality.
The parcel ID.
And by the way, that's not always the exact same thing
as the assessor's parcel number,
but a lot of the times it will be.
You can see the current owner.
That's obviously really helpful.
You can see the acreage,
you can see the land use code,
so you'd probably have to get more information from the county
to verify exactly what that means.
You can also see the county's opinion of the market value.
You can see the mailing address of the owner in case you want to reach out to them.
This can be really a helpful in the case of sending out neighbor letters and that kind of thing.
The school district.
A lot of times you can even click on this to go to the county website
and then get even more information from the county on that particular property.
And sometimes I've seen it sort of fall apart when it gets to this point
because maybe the county doesn't really have a very good website
or they don't have this information easily available.
So it's not always going to bring you to a place that's helpful,
but a lot of times it will.
So, that we can go back here
and that's pretty much Parlay.
I mean, it doesn't answer every single question you're ever going to have
when you're doing due diligence,
but just the ability to have these maps automatically layered over Google Earth with the ability
to tilt it around and just see different angles and perspectives.
I mean, this can be really useful when you're doing due diligence
and also when you're trying to send out this information
to your buyers list or put together a property listing.
Being able to see this perspective and see this information in one place
without having to go to a bunch of different services to get it can be pretty useful.
And for $300 a year if you're using this more than a handful of times a year,
I think it's worth it just in the ease of use and the convenience of it.
I know for a lot of years what I used to do is I would take screenshots with Google Earth
and then I would try to use Microsoft Paint to draw parcel lines over the land
where I thought it was and it wasn't accurate.
It wasn't perfect.
It definitely did not look good,
but Parlay 2.0 basically just completely replaces the need for that
because the information is just there.
Like I can just take the screenshot and use it as it is.
So, I thought you guys should know about it.
Again, I don't make money from this.
I'm just telling you because it's a good service.
And if you do want to learn more about DataTree or AgentPro
or these other services I've been mentioning in this video,
I'm also going to include a couple of videos to tutorials on those services as well
so you can get more context for what they are and how they work
in case you're not already familiar with them.
I've done a lot of different videos on both of those services
and they definitely both fill a need for anybody who's working with real estate,
especially if you're working with vacant land properties in any capacity.
So be sure to check those out.
I'll have them right here on the screen if you want to do that.
And hopefully this video was helpful and informative
and I'll talk to you guys next time.