I have yet to find an occupied bank owned property. When banks repossess property they tend to vacate it as a matter of course. When you’re evaluating a vacant property as an investment you need to forecast the PRI or potential rental income for next 12 months of your ownership (and beyond). You can do this by knocking on doors and asking neighbors, looking on craigslist, and calling ads in the paper, but there is also an online tool you can use to get a feel for what the area will bear, rentometer.com.

Visit rentometer and enter the address you are looking to purchase the number of units in the building and the rent you expect the property will bring.

The rentometer produces an easy to read chart showing where your projected rent falls as compared to other rents in the area which are also plotted on the map to the right.

Finally, you can get further details about the individually mapped rental properties when you click on the map marker

Obviously this service isn’t ONLY for bank owned properties. Whether you’re evaluating the current rents in your building or those of a prospective purchase you should start with this. Sure it isn’t the end-all-be-all of rental market due diligence but it is a great way to start and it will definitely offer you enough information to decide if your prospective purchase is worth going through the investigative motions. Rentometer is the front end to a terrific back-end rental management system called rentomatic that is specifically designed for the independent investor. That service though is for another post. Rentometer and the basic level of Rentomatic are FREE.