
Show HN: SpendTree – A tool to analyze income properties - dpain
https://spendtree.com
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breitling
As a real estate investor, let me say this is fantastic. The only suggestion I
have is to include more demographic information. I usually need a lot more
detail about the neighbourhood (ethnicity, income, profession, married %, pop
by age group, etc). Are you familiar with zipskinny.Com? They do a great job
at the demographics.

Edit: looks like zipskinny is down, but here's an image of what their chart
looked like: [http://www.bobguskind.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/zip-
ski...](http://www.bobguskind.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/zip-
skinny-11215.jpg)

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dpain
Awesome feedback, this is definitely on our list of things to add, you can be
sure to see it soon!

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cmottau
Where does the data come from? We collect and publish building permit data at
the property level which might be a good add-on for investors looking to for
info on the the condition of the structure. If you're interested in adding
building permit records to your reports I'd love to discuss. You can email me
direclty at chris [at] buildzoom.com

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dpain
email sent!

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lvs
Perhaps this crowd won't agree, but "income properties" and "real estate
investment" are horrible things when it comes to residential real estate. This
is _THE_ major driving force for urban cost-of-living increases on both
American coasts. If I could downvote the whole concept of this industry, I
would.

When speculators speculate on food commodities, people argue that it provides
market liquidity to justify why that's not entirely illegal. Well, real estate
is by definition illiquid, so speculative activity in this area benefits
nobody but the speculators.

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eldavido
Urban coastal real estate is expensive because more people want to live there.

Jobs + great weather + anti-development policy = high prices.

Really...it's that simple.

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lsc
>Jobs + great weather + anti-development policy = high prices.

The thing is, the anti-development policy is a big chunk of that, and it
derives directly from "real-estate investing" (and not just renting, owning.)
- so you could say that you are agreeing with the parent, I mean, if you take
a generous interpretation of "real-estate investment" that includes homeowners
who consider their house to be an investment.

Who votes? mostly people who own property and want that property to increase
in value. This means we (here in silicon valley) have a regulatory system that
makes building new high-density housing quite difficult.

In California, the problem is exacerbated by measures like prop 13, which
insulates property owners from the tax consequences of increased home values.

Leasing, I agree, is super unpleasant. Especially in commercial situations.
(It's like buying, only less flexible!)

But, it's a really difficult problem to solve. I mean, encouraging or
subsidizing homeownership seems like an obvious first step, but that has non-
obvious negative effects on the regulatory regime, because more homeowners
means more voters voting for policies that make building more housing
difficult.

I mean, obviously, parent comment isn't being productive; but one can trace a
lot of the high cost of living at least here in silicon valley to homeowners
blocking high-density construction in an effort to drive up the value of their
own assets.

Of course, the parent comment seems to think that renting out real-estate is a
major part of this... and personally, I don't think that is the case. I don't
think that landlords are the political force that homeowners are, and the
scarcity of housing, at least in silicon valley, is largely a political
problem.

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gatsby
This is really cool - congrats on the launch!

Does all of the property analysis currently happen in individual reports? As a
RE investor, I'd love some comparison tools to comp out similar properties
side by side.

Shoot me an email if you want to chat further. Love talking all things RE
tech.

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sauronlord
This is awesome. I'm investing in Waterloo, Ontario and I've built my own
spreadsheets to help me make good investment decisions. This blows it out of
the water. I'm glad you made this product.

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infinitone
So does this tool automatically pull in the data given a property or do I have
to input some of the data?

Definitely looks like something I'd want to use as a home buyer.

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dpain
Right now you can generate a report on the property using as little as
Address, Purchase price, Square footage and a guess of beds/baths. We estimate
the rest based on market data - the basis for each estimate is shown in the
report.

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dpain
We are targeting MLS integration with our next development phase, however,
which would autofill all of this information.

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CodyReichert
I actually saw this posted on Reddit earlier and was super impressed! Glad to
see it here posted as well :) I was silently wondering if you were aggregating
MLS data.

I run SimplyRETS[0] - we provide a normalized API to MLS's RETS data. I'm not
trying to sell you anything, but I'd love to team up - You should shoot me an
email (cody@simplyrets.com)!

Best of luck and great work on the product!

[0] - [https://simplyrets.com](https://simplyrets.com)

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alexchamberlain
Is psychological pricing (3 cents below the dollar) necessary? Does it make a
material difference to sales?

