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3 Tools for Finding Income Property for Sale
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3 Tools for Finding Income Property for Sale


Are you planning to start investing in real estate income properties? Or are you already an investor looking for your next property purchase? If your answer is “yes” to either question, then the odds are you’re looking for income property for sale. Finding properties that will make money and profits is an important skill for any real estate investor to acquire. But don’t worry as in this digital age, you can find almost anything online – even income property investments! Mashvisor, for example, uses traditional and predictive real estate data and analytics that analyzes both housing markets and properties anywhere in the US housing market. Want to give us a try? Here’s a list of the best investment property search tools that you can access right here to find rental properties that’ll make you money in 2020.

1) The Heatmap Analysis Tool

Savvy investors know that what makes rental properties profitable is mainly their location. Meaning if you’ve found a profitable location for buying income property, you’ll definitely find properties for sale that promise good rental income and cash flow. Normally, to find the best place to invest in real estate, investors will run a real estate market analysis to find a city with good investment performance and then a neighborhood analysis to identify the best neighborhood. As you can expect, it’ll take days (if not weeks) to run these analyses using spreadsheets. So why do all this work when you can use real estate investment tools to get the job done quickly and efficiently?

The tool you need for this is the Real Estate Heatmap. Using Mashvisor’s Heatmap, you can simply select the city where you’re looking for rental income property for sale. Once you’ve hit the “Explore the Data” button, the tool will automatically highlight the neighborhoods based on their investment performance. This system of color-coding makes it much easier for investors to identify the areas that perform better than others according to specific real estate metrics. Areas with high-performance rates appear in green while those with low rates appear in red. Real estate metrics that come with the Heatmap include:

  • Property Listing Price
  • Rental Income (Traditional & Airbnb)
  • Cash on Cash Return (Traditional & Airbnb)
  • Airbnb Occupancy Rate

Mashvisor’s Real Estate Heatmap

You can play around with the filters for these metrics to analyze different neighborhoods within the city. So to find profitable income property for sale, you need to find an area with low property listing prices, high rental income, and a high occupancy rate. These indicators suggest that investment properties in this location are affordable yet profitable. Want to give it a try? Click here!

Related: Heatmap Analysis: The Secret to Successful Real Estate Investing

2) The Rental Property Finder

After finding the best neighborhood for buying income property, now you can actually start your property search. To find the right rental income property for sale, a real estate investor has to set his/her criteria of what exactly they’re looking for. Besides the investment location, your criteria should also include the type of property you want to buy for real estate investing, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, your budget, and others. You can then use an investment property search tool to find income producing properties for sale and start browsing through them until you find one that matches your criteria. But what if that property does not promise a good return on investment? All of your time spent searching will have gone to waste and you’ll need to start over again.

This is why you need to use only the best online search tool and that is Mashvisor’s Rental Property Finder! Our property finder is unique in that it can find income property investments not only based on the search criteria that you enter. It also uses machine-learning algorithms and predictive analytics to find properties with the highest profitability and list them based on their performance. So after you’ve set the filters, our Rental Property Finder will show you all the listings that 1) match your criteria and 2) have the highest potential for ROI in terms of cash on cash return.

Related: What Is a Good Cash on Cash Return in 2020?

You can customize your search using various filters such as:

  • Desired Investment Location (you can choose up to 5 cities)
  • Type of Investment Property (Single Family Home, Multi Family Home, Condos, etc.)
  • Preferred Rental Strategy (Traditional or Airbnb)
  • Number of Bedroom and Bathrooms
  • Budget

Mashvisor’s Rental Property Finder

Want to start your search for residential income property for sale using our Rental Property Finder? Sign up for a free Mashvisor account now!

3) Mashvisor Property Marketplace 

As a beginner real estate investor, you might not know this but experienced investors are almost always looking for off market properties. After being in the real estate investing industry for a while, they have realized that buying off market properties can be the best income property investments they’ve made. This is because these properties are typically cheap and can make a great ROI either as rentals or fix-and-flips. However, not everyone is an expert on how to find an off market income property for sale. Don’t worry – Mashvisor has the best investment property search tool to solve this: The Property Marketplace!

Using this tool, real estate investors have the ability to search for and start finding income properties for sale off the market anywhere in the US. The types of properties you can find on Mashvisor Property Marketplace include foreclosures, bank-owned, short sales, and auctioned income producing properties for sale. And to make things easier, you can also sort and narrow down listings by zip code, town, and city. Plus, you can use filters like budget, rental strategy (traditional or Airbnb), number of bathrooms and bedrooms. All of this ensures you’ll find income property for sale that is cheap and profitable in no time! Visit the Mashvisor Property Marketplace today and find the off market property you’ve been searching for!

Mashvisor’s Property Marketplace

Bonus Tool: The Investment Property Calculator

The next tool we’re discussing is not really a search tool, but it’s the ultimate real estate investment tool for investors looking to make profits off of residential income properties. That is the Investment Property Calculator. Why? Let’s take an example saying you’ve found a bunch of investment properties for sale and you want to buy only one. Obviously, you want to pick the one that yields the highest profit and return on investment. To identify it, you need to run an investment property analysis on each one, compare the numbers, and then decide accordingly. Calculating all the numbers, however, can be confusing and time-consuming for beginner investors. Using the Investment Property Calculator, on the other hand, makes it much easier.

This tool calculates your finances, fine-tunes your costs, and displays readily calculated estimations of ROI. To calculate ROI, the calculator takes into account real estate rental comps which you can also see for yourself. Meaning, you no longer need to waste time creating spreadsheets for each property you analyze! What’s unique about our calculator is that it also gives you a rental strategy comparison that shows you how the rental property is expected to perform as a traditional rental vs an Airbnb rental. This is a great feature for investors looking for vacation income property for sale. For both rental strategies, the real estate data and metrics you’ll see include:

  • Rental Income
  • Monthly Expenses
  • Cash Flow
  • Cash on Cash Return
  • Cap Rate
  • Occupancy Rate

Mashvisor’s Investment Property Calculator

To learn exactly how to use this tool, read: Mashvisor’s Rental Property Calculator: A Guide for Beginner Real Estate Investors

The Bottom Line

Being a real estate investor is not easy. This is why you need the help of these best real estate investment tools in 2020 to be able to find income property for sale like a pro. Start out your 14-day free trial now to start looking for and analyzing the best investment properties anywhere in the US housing market.

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Eman Hamed

Eman is a Content Writer at Mashvisor. With a focus on market reports, she enjoys researching the state of the real estate market in different cities across the US. Eman also writes about trends, forecasts, and tips for beginner investors to gain the confidence and knowledge they need to make wise decisions.

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