It’s easy to use a real-estate search engine to find a house, but now a Denver company has developed technology that helps investors find deals.
allows investors to search for properties based on criteria such as cash flow, capitalization rates, market rents and more. It also ensures brokers referring their clients to the site get the credit — and commission — they deserve.
The combination of low interest rates and best affordability in 40 years makes now a good time to invest in real estate, said Walter Charnoff, InvestorLoft’s chairman and chief executive. was recently named best new real- estate investor tool of 2008 by Personal Real Estate Investor Magazine.
“Right now, real estate is on sale, prices are low, rents are higher and there is an abundance of renters,” he said. “When people try to time the bottom, they miss it.”
is a somewhat similar website but is offered only in California and does not include technology to protect real-estate professionals who refer members to the site.
There isn’t another national company offering the same robust technology that enables searches by equity, cash flow and cap rates.
Other companies also aren’t able to protect the role of real-estate professionals through InvestorLoft’s “ReferSafe” technology, according to the company.
Real-estate investors are expected to play a key role in the housing market recovery. They account for 22 percent of current real-estate transactions, according to a study by the National Association of Realtors. The Federal Housing Administration recently increased the number of properties an investor can finance from four to 10.
Charnoff’s Web development firm Onit Solutions built for its previous owner. Charnoff bought the company’s assets in July 2007, took down the site and relaunched it in November that year.
Since March, the site has launched in 15 states and grown to 22,000 members.
Charnoff said he expects to launch a similar product for commercial real estate by the first quarter of next year.
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
