Real Estate Investing Gets Online Boost

2009 June 20

Look closely at some of the hottest housing markets in the nation right now and you’ll find many of the homebuyers driving up the sales figures are real estate investors.

They bought one out of every five homes last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. And many are snapping up deeply discounted foreclosed homes and other distressed properties in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Looking to make money off investors looking to make money, several Web sites are now vying to be the go-to portals for real estate prospectors.

Among them are LoopNet.com, InvestorLoft.com and the newest contender, SmartZip.com, which launches next week in a trial stage.

One of the more established sites is LoopNet. It carries more than 685,000 commercial property listings, but also residential income properties, or those marketed to buyers looking to become landlords.

Users can search for listings several ways, including city, state and price range. Results come with details like photos, price information and an aerial map of the neighborhood.

LoopNet also provides demographic data within several miles of the property, including average household income and retail sales, which can be helpful to would-be landlords looking to gauge the potential tenant pool.

Another site, InvestorLoft, also hosts property listings. Its search engine can be tuned to sort listings by more than the usual property details.

The portal, which relaunched in January after undergoing a redesign, lets users narrow their search by investment goal: A property that’s likely to generate the most cash in the short term, one with the most equity or one that will pay for itself the quickest.

Real estate investing gets online boost

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