{"id":75,"date":"2010-07-01T13:41:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T20:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/?p=75"},"modified":"2010-07-01T13:41:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T20:41:48","slug":"web-based-resources-for-the-private-money-profesional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Web based resources for the private money professional"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Clay Sparkman<\/em><br \/>\nToday I will focus on a few web based tools that I have found to be useful in the business.<br \/>\nLet\u2019s start locally (Portland, Oregon) and then expand out from there.\u00a0 A really nice little site if you are doing business in the Portland area is:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmaps.com\/\">www.Portlandmaps.com<\/a><br \/>\nThe City of Portland provides PortlandMaps.com as a new way of easily accessing public data regarding properties and property areas.\u00a0 A wide variety of data is available for the Portland Metropolitan Area, including the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Assessor\/Tax Lot Information<\/li>\n<li>Aerial Photography<\/li>\n<li>Building Footprints<\/li>\n<li>Building Permits<\/li>\n<li>Census<\/li>\n<li>Crime Data<\/li>\n<li>Elevation<\/li>\n<li>Parks<\/li>\n<li>Mass Transit<\/li>\n<li>Natural Hazard<\/li>\n<li>Schools<\/li>\n<li>Urban Growth Boundary<\/li>\n<li>Underground Storage Tanks<\/li>\n<li>Water\/Sewer<\/li>\n<li>Zip Code<\/li>\n<li>Zoning Maps<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fortunately most states offer all kinds of helpful data on-line now.\u00a0 For instance, this handy site offered by the state of Oregon gives you access to a wide range of licenses, permits, and registrations.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.licenseinfo.oregon.gov\/index.cfm\">www.licenseinfo.oregon.gov\/index.cfm<\/a><br \/>\nOf particular interest to me is this site which allows me to lookup a mortgage broker\u2019s license:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.licenseinfo.oregon.gov\/?fuseaction=link_class&amp;class_list=1732,14592,26398&amp;class_name=Mortgage%20lenders&amp;LinkType=P\">Oregon mortgage broker licenses<\/a><br \/>\nIt is also frequently useful to lookup the license status of a given contractor, which you may do in Oregon at:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.licenseinfo.oregon.gov\/?fuseaction=link_class&amp;class_list=13833,13830,13831,1536,1551,1683,1537,1555,1556,1713,1677,1666,1665,13829,13828,1739,14724,26481,1674&amp;class_name=Construction%20contractors&amp;LinkType=P\">Oregon contractor licenses<\/a><br \/>\nI\u2019m sure that just about everyone in this business already knows about Zillow:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zillow.com\/\">www.zillow.com<\/a><br \/>\nZillow is a great little comp tool, easy to use, with a vast national database, and free.\u00a0 It does not offer the range of options available with most professional comp tools, but then they are expensive.\u00a0 I can remember when we first signed up to MetroScan at Fairfield.\u00a0 The price was very substantial and the software was localized to the machine, so that you could only use it at one workstation at one site without paying even more, and updates were given monthly via mailed CD-ROMs.\u00a0 We also had very limited regional access and had to pay for access by county (that is if a particular county were available at all).\u00a0 We\u2019ve come a long way.<br \/>\nAlso, I hear good things about the Zillow blog, though I haven\u2019t had time to properly check it out for myself:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zillow.com\/blog\">www.zillow.com\/blog<\/a><br \/>\nI know I don\u2019t need to tell anyone about Google Earth.\u00a0 When I was first introduced to this site, I just about fell off my chair!\u00a0 I still can\u2019t quite believe that such a powerful far reaching tool exists, at my fingertips and for free.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/earth.google.com\/\">http:\/\/earth.google.com<\/a><br \/>\nAnd it just keeps getting better.\u00a0 The Street View layer of Google Earth is incredible.\u00a0 It allows you to do drive by inspections from your home office or living room.\u00a0 Of course it is not really as good a an actual drive by, but it certainly allows you to get a feel for a property and its neighborhood.<br \/>\nNow, if you want to look at real estate trend data for a given area\u2014something I would think you would want to do these days before making just about any loan\u2014this site is terrific:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.altosresearch.com\/altos\/Home.page\">www.altosresearch.com\/altos\/Home.page<\/a><br \/>\nThe Scotsman Guide has long been regarded as the \u201cbible\u201d of the commercial and residential loan industry, offering detailed categorical listings of various active lenders and loan sources.\u00a0 Their online site is here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scotsmanguide.com\/\">www.scotsmanguide.com<\/a><br \/>\nAnd Lendicom may be of interest to you.\u00a0 This site is geared toward commercial lending, and allows borrowers and brokers to sign up and submit specific loan proposals to lenders who have also signed up online.\u00a0 If you are a hard money lender looking directly for commercial loans to fund, you may sign up as a lender and create an account that allows you to specify detailed criteria regarding the specific loans that you would be interested in.\u00a0 In the interest of full disclosure, I am an officer and a part owner of the company that offers this site.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why I like it so much.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lendicom.com\/\">www.lendicom.com<\/a><br \/>\nIf you are aware of any sites that I didn&#8217;t mention which might be useful to the subscribers to this blog, please take a moment to respond via comment or send an e-mail.\u00a0 Either way, I will make sure that any useful information is shared.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8212; Clay (clay@privatemoneysource.com, 503-476-2909)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Clay is Vice President of Fairfield Financial, a primary source for private money since 1964.\u00a0 Fairfield is currently targeting loans in Oregon and Washington, with potential to loan in:\u00a0 AK, CA, CO, ID, FL, GA, ID, MT, NV, NY, OK and TX.\u00a0 To submit a loan to Fairfield for consideration: <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatemoneysource.com\/loanproposal.php\">http:\/\/www.privatemoneysource.com\/loanproposal.php<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clay Sparkman Today I will focus on a few web based tools that I have found to be useful in the business. Let\u2019s start locally (Portland, Oregon) and then expand out from there.\u00a0 A really nice little site if you are doing business in the Portland area is: www.Portlandmaps.com The City of Portland provides PortlandMaps.com [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[42,43,45,46,54,55,57,58,60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}