Commercial Real Estate Blog

First time real estate investors are often torn between investing in commercial real estate, or residential/multi-family property. A while back we wrote a post about Rentometer, a quick and dirty rent analysis tool apartment investors could use to gauge market rents.

HotPads.com has gone one step further and introduced a Rent vs. Buy Heatmap showing areas which have a low (or high) ratio of Avg. Home Prices to Annual Rent. It is not exactly scientific, and the system is only as good as the data, but the heat maps provide some insight as to what areas might warrant further research.

The system shows North Sunnyvale/Alviso as having a low ratio of Prices:Rent, but it seems the system has been gamed by limited availability of rental units and for sale housing that is mostly mobile homes. That said, other areas hit hardest by foreclosures (Brentwood, Tracy, Hollister, etc.) seem to have decent amounts of data on both rentals and for sale making the heat maps more relevant.

They also have heat maps for median rent, foreclosures per household, and others.

In a market where the internet has increased the ease with which investor’s can locate, educate themselves, and invest in commercial real estate far outside their immediate area, it seems only appropriate that a U.S. district court judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs to declare Turf State laws invalid.

Turf State laws essentially prohibit real estate brokers from cooperating with unlicensed interstate brokers. While California is not a “Turf State”, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Utah have Turf State laws. As a result of the Kentucky lawsuit, it is expected that each of these states will face similar legal challenges to their Turf State laws.