The 5 Real Estate Tools You Need to Have in Your Arsenal
Sharper tools make sharper investors.
If you’re able to analyze opportunities quickly and correctly, your chances for success in commercial real estate will significantly increase.
Not to mention you’ll get better deals and beat out the competition.
So, here are the 5 real estate tools you need to have in your arsenal if you want to be a successful real estate professional.
1. Laser Measure
The laser measure might be one of the simplest and most underrated tools on this list.
They bring an immense amount of convenience since they give you the ability to quickly measure ceiling heights, long distances, and room dimensions.
Say goodbye to tape measures.
This Tacklife Laser Measure is the one I picked up from Amazon and it’s always by my side.
It also has a built in program to calculate square footage and volume.
2. HP 10bII+ Financial Calculator
You need a good financial calculator.
Especially if you’re looking to have a quick “back of napkin” formula to analyze any opportunities that come your way.
10bII+ calculators can process far more complicated equations, but for our purposes they allow you to enter your estimated loan value, interest rate, and loan term and quickly determine your monthly payments (or, as long as you have 3 of those 4 numbers, you can solve for the missing 4th).
I like the HP 10bII+ app on my iPhone but you can also keep a physical copy on-hand.
3. Underwriting Software
When you underwrite your investments, you need to account for everything you possibly can.
If you don’t, you could find yourself pretty far off from your projections.
The right underwriting program will relieve you from the overwhelming task of remembering each and every item that you need to account for and will also run quick calculations and show you projected outcomes.
I use one that my partner originally put together for multifamily investments that I modified for commercial.
If you’d like to put your own together, most investors will create their own spreadsheet using Excel or Google Sheets, or you can buy the software we created for our underwriting below.
4. Drone
I use my DJI Mavic 2 Pro just about every week - sometimes more.
And it’s not just a useful tool for taking photos and videos of properties for marketing materials.
We’ve actually used it to inspect the roof of a property while we were on tour, which allowed my clients to make an offer onsite to beat out the competition.
Drones are certainly the most advanced tool on this list, but they will often have the highest return on investment.
They give you a birds-eye view that you wouldn’t otherwise have and truly unlock your analytical abilities when surveying a property.
5. Camera
If you’re looking to step up your marketing game, quit taking photos with your phone.
Invest in a professional camera - it truly does make a massive difference in quality.
And similar to your drone, cameras aren’t just for taking marketing photos.
I utilize my Canon EOS M50 to document the renovation progress and any changes we’ve made on our investments.
They also come in handy for before and after photos of tenant-occupied suites.
We store all of the photos we take on a Google Drive, which gives me and my team ready access to those photos wherever we are.
About The Author:
Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors as a board member for the Real Estate Investors of Nashville.
Quickly determine if a deal is worth pursuing or not.