Here's a question I get all the time:
"How do you quickly evaluate all of the deals that you're sent?"
Most new investors think underwriting means starting from scratch every single time they look at a deal. That's like reinventing the wheel daily; exhausting and completely unnecessary.
Here's what I've learned after analyzing thousands of deals:
When you're looking at deals of similar size, asset class, and geographic area, the vast majority of underwriting is identical across all deals.
Instead of hunting for rent comps and sales comps every time you see a property, we do this work upfront and regularly behind the scenes. We build our database of accurate comps and update it periodically, then pull from it repeatedly.
Think about it like this: you wouldn't look up the same restaurant's hours every time you want to eat there, right? The same principle applies here.
Once you have your comp database ready, underwriting becomes simple:
Get the property info into your spreadsheet
Input your proven assumptions
Pull from your existing rent and sales comps
This entire process takes me 15-20 minutes max, depending on the deal size.
I save the deep-dive expense analysis for when I'm actually close to making an offer. Before that point, you're just wasting time on deals that may not even be worth pursuing.
Bottom line is... stop starting from scratch. Build your systems once, use them repeatedly, and watch your deal flow multiply while your analysis time shrinks.