Have you heard of www.zilpy.com? Visit the web page, type in your Sacramento area address, and see if the estimation of rent is anywhere close to what you think is accurate for the property you are thinking of.
Here is how it works. I typed in 6901 14th Avenue in Sacramento and then the following information popped up. Zilpy located 30-50 rental properties within the immediate neighborhood. That’s fairly impressive, huh?
Zilpy also provided basic information about some of the demographics of the neighborhood. This is always interesting. As a side note, when an appraiser completes a Rental Survey, he or she needs to not consider things like Ethnicity and the Ethnic Composition of the neighborhood in determining market rent. If an appraiser included this type of information in his report, the appraiser could get in some hot water.
Lastly, Zilpy comes up with a range of rent and an overall estimation of rent based upon the data provided from the search parameters.
Zilpy is a great tool to obtain some basic rental data to help determine what you could rent a particular property for. It’s one of those sites that is fun to mess around with for a while. BUT like any online tool delving into the world of estimation or valuation, while it has potential to be useful, it can also be gravely inaccurate. After all, without seeing the property or knowing its characteristics, and maybe not knowing the local market and important geographical boundaries that make a huge difference with rent, it makes sense that there is some room for error.
Like the Zilpy site says:
“Use Zilpy Rent as a starting point to get the market fair estimate for a specific location and property characteristics”
Bottom line: Have fun with this tool, but just know its limitations. If you play around with it and type in your address, please comment above to let everyone know if you think it is anywhere close to accurate. Enjoy.