Most real estate markets are soft right now, some are down, and a few are up. Of course, this means that it’s a perfect time to be a buyer. With that thought in mind, here are some tools that real estate investors can use to determine whether or not to buy a property, what to do with it and where to find a good deal.

Bigger Pockets
The oldest, and most extensive of the sites mentioned here, Bigger Pockets is an educational resource for real estate investors. They have an outstanding blog, and seem to stay well clear of the sleaze that is so much a part of this industry online.

BiggerPockets® was created to help beginner and advanced investors network, make deals, and learn to invest in real estate. Learn about wholesaling, purchasing foreclosures, landlording, rehabbing, tax strategies, creative financing, land investing, commercial and residential real estate investing, and much more.

Rent Yield
If you’re planning to rent one, or many, of your properties I’d encourage you to take a good look at Rent Yield. It allows you to easily add and manage properties, tenants and vendors. It used to be a subscription based product, but now you can access it for free – something that I appreciate. It’s a simple tool, yet packs a lot of punch. It’s definitely worth trying to see whether it meets your particular needs.

Flipping Pad
The Flipping Pad is a community built around real estate investing. I wrote about them when they launched a few months ago, and though they’re still growing, they’re on the right track. Here you can network with other real estate investors, showcase your “pads” and take part in their discussion boards.

Some interesting links for real estate:

Bloodhound Blogs “Real Estate Weblogging 101” Book –

Simple Spark – Search for web applications that fit your needs. Here’s a search for “real estate” applications. Pretty good results actually.

RentYield – A rental property management tool for landlords and real estate investors. I’ve been playing around with it and it seems like it’s got some really good features.

Rent Me a Vacation – Vacation rentals, cabin rentals, apartments, Luxury villas and holiday rentals direct from the owners.

The FlippingPad is a new website that brings real estate investors together, and also sheds a little more light onto the whole “flipping” industry. I’m a big fan of the site so far. It has a great look, the features for connecting and advertising properties are easy to use, and the beginnings of a community can be seen.

The “Pads” page allows registered users to post case studies, list a property and look for other investors to partner with. I’m particularly impressed with their filtering system, and I like how easy the list is to scan and find what I’m looking for. Once you’ve created a profile, you can start saving pads for later.

One thing that I haven’t been able to do with the FlippingPad yet is figure out how to get in touch with another user. I found a property that I liked, but was unable to get in touch with the user that put it online. So, the networking between users has a few things to iron out, I would expect to be able to flag myself for emails or private messages. I’d also like to be able to email a property to a friend from the property page, it seems like that should be done for better property visibility – whether you’re a registered user or not.

Lastly, there are some neat buttons and widgets that you can add to your website or blog. If you want to show your 10 most recently listed properties, with direct links back to FlippingPad, then this could work out for you. Put the code in your sidebar and you’re done.

This is an impressive first release for an underserved niche. I’m looking forward to seeing where the FlippingPad goes and how their network grows to become a full-bodied community.

With the housing market starting to show signs of exhaustion, buyers are starting to become more picky when it comes to purchasing a new home. As a seller, one must strive to make their investment more appealing and attractive to these potential buyers. Here are a few links, including a nice slideshow, to help you decide on what remodeling you might want to do to grab the attention of your next buyer. Both links are from www.businessweek.com here and here.

TechCrunch is reporting that Zillow has made the move to allow real estate property owners to update information on their homes. So, if you were to look at your house listing and see that it stated you had 2 bathrooms, when you really have 3 now, you can change it.

This really is moving in the right direction, sure there are going to be some hiccups on verification of who the owner is and whether or not the upgrade really did happen, but it’s a start. The more information that Zillow gets on each and every property, the more valuable their database becomes. Harnessing the end-user as the provider of this information only makes it easier and aligns them with the new movement in web applications.

This is a good thing, and I’d like to commend Zillow for taking steps in the right direction.

Did you know that the Playboy Mansion is roughly worth $5,907,559? Also, did you know that this number is $54,622 less than it was a week ago? The only reason I know this is because of Yahoo’s new Real Estate site.

August 29th, 2006 marks the day that Yahoo made their remodeled real estate site public. There are a lot of new features including current home valuations courtesy of Zillow, over 3 million real estate listings to surf through courtesy of Prudential Real Estate, interactive maps, and aerial views of homes. They also have a few values of famous homes for you to play with, probably to see what the site can do. I wonder when Google will come out with something to compete against this.