The Expert Podcast

This is David active Intel investigations One of the common types of cases we've been asked to work on lately is due diligence on a real estate purchase And in these cases it's not a commercial building or something that has you know a larger financial research it's a residential purchase And it's due diligence on what's going around that property For example you're buying a house in a neighborhood To some extent you're buying the neighborhood So verifying things like the makeup of the neighborhood in terms of finances law enforcement call-outs is there a lot of crime in that neighborhood are the things like barking dogs are there disputes between neighbors Are there things like a lot of people coming in going into the neighborhood maybe that are up to no good One of the things we found is by doing a social media search on the close neighbors of that subject property you can get a sense for what the fabric or kind of what the the nature of the community is going to be like Are these people that are kind of similar to what you want to be around Are they professionals or they're people that you know have a high degree of concern and ethics and maybe even participation in the improvement of the neighborhood A lot of times you won't see that looking at a house two or three times spending 45 minutes there because you may not be there all times a day So in some cases seeing what happens at different hours or on weekends Is a valuable piece of information you're making a five or six or $700,000 investment You probably do a lot of due diligence If you were going to make that investment in a business or in stocks or in some other type of commodity So buying a house is more than just saying is the house that valuable is the structure in the property It's looking at your lifestyle because you're going to spend your entire life in and around the people in that area You want to make sure that the Personality and the flavor that you're seeing by visiting it is actually the same once you're there so things like social media things like references in Craigslist what's being bought and sold on Craigslist in that area are there neighborhood forums like next door.com that you can look to see what type of people are there How are they communicating Is there a lot of you know swearing and people bullying each other or is it more of a comfortable type of professional or family environment that you're interested in You can also glean a lot of information for photos that are on other ads things like for lease ads four properties in the area Are there a lot of Airbnb properties that might have You know parties from people visiting or a lot of cars and neighborhood or parking problems These are all things that a very concise and limited investigation Of that community of that street of the properties around it can really help you understand what you're buying into the house might be your dream house It might have the granite countertops The stainless kitchen But if the people around you Whether it's the noise whether it's the crime whether it's the social morals of the people in that neighborhood are going to be offensive to you All of those other creature comforts in that house are not going to have any value If you have to live within an environment that's not conducive to the upgrading bringing of your children Or maintaining your finances So some basic due diligence on a neighborhood you can do a lot of it yourself If you'd like to get more in depth we'd be glad to help you with that It's a very reasonable thing compared to an eight or $900,000 investment in a property you're going to live at for 10 10 or 15 years