What is FinestExpert.com?

Welcome to FinestExpert.com. Although FinestExpert.com aims to serve the real estate investor, the astute homebuyer will recognize the truth of "your home is usually the biggest investment you ever make." Consequently we take an investor approach to everything, from providing investor search criteria, such as discount, cashflow, or cash-on-cash return to detailed property analysis and side-by-side-by-side property comparisons to providing the first ever property rating system, the FE-Score. FinestExpert.com is quickly becoming known as The Cashflow Search Engine and the Home of the FE-Score.

Real estate gurus claim, "you make your money when you buy, so buy right." Therefore, every search should be begin with a discount rate (compared to the estimated market value of a property). The target fix-and-flip discount rate is 65% (aka 65-cents on the dollar). This generally provides enough latitude for the cost of repairs, transactional costs, and satisfactory profits. On the homepage, set the "Price Discount" as desired. From the map, open the selection drop-down adjacent to the "$" (dollar symbol) to set the "Price Discount".

For the buy-and-hold approach, a discount of 15-percent may be satisfactory. But, you will want to make sure the that property cashflows. You more likely want a property that will give you a specific cash-on-cash return (CCR). . On the homepage, set the "Cash-on-Cash" as desired – typically 6-9-percent. From the map, open the selection drop-down adjacent to the "$" (dollar symbol) to set the "Cash-on-Cash".

If you are on the homepage, hit "Search". If on the map, hit "Update Map". Now, the only properties shown on the map are those that meet your financial criteria. You can further filter by geography and property type. Just setting these two financial criteria saves the average investor over an hour per potential property.

FinestExpert.com is the first (?only) tool that goes out and gathers rental, tax, insurance, association dues, and other related expense data enabling it to pre-analyze every property and so estimate investment performance.

Now, it’s not a perfect world out there, but we do our best to prune out bad data. And, as cool as Google Earth is, it still cannot see into these homes for sale and not in real time either! Therefore, we have provided you the ability to see exactly what values we are using and give you the ability to adjust them on the spot – with the results of all changes calculated instantly as you type. If you want to put less down, think you can get more rent, or have specific knowledge about the association dues, just make the change.

As of FinestExpert’s release in June 2009, many markets have already undervalued their properties and some are already on the rebound (in certain price ranges). Like a kid in a candy shop, sometimes there are just too many good deals. How do we tell them apart? FinestExpert.com has created the first-of-its-kind rating system for investment properties called the FE-Score. Modeled after Fair Isaac’s FICO score, it rates the likely investment performance of a property. The FE-Score boils down a multitude of variables into a single, easy to understand number, making it easy to compare properties. Additionally, you can mark properties to be “saved” and then compare them side-by-side-by-side, as many as you want.

FinestExpert.com has many more benefits available to both investors and homebuyers that they will have to be taken up in later posts. For now, just put on your investor hat, specify your parameters, and use the cool map search tools.

Robert T. Boyer, Ph.D.
Co-Founder FinestExpert.com
The Cashflow Search Engine
Home of the FE-Score.
@RobertBoyer
@FinestExpert