In the past, the best that most of the average investors could do is to "ASSUME" that rental income is fixed, property maintenance costs are fixed, commissions paid for buying and selling are fixed, taxes are fixed ... the list goes on and even the home value, the most important part of the investment, needed to be foreseen before the decision is made.

I'll give you an example, for most so-called investment estimators and calculators out there, you need to tell them that your current property value is $100,000, that's fine. But when you tell them that rental income is $1,500, the calculator takes it as though the rent would be $1,500 fixed each month in the future until you liquidate your property. True? Don't think so. Same thing happens to taxes, commissions, maintenance costs and all other items. And similarly, when they ask you what do you think the home value is at the time you liquidate your property, the results you get are really assuming that the all of the above said are fixed.

Not that I'm suggesting the results you get from calculators like these are totally not-usable, but something is completely ignored: RISK. Every investor knows that risk is the central concept of real estate investment. Assuming that everthing's fixed is really assuming that the entire investment plan has no risk. Of course, one can argue that he or she can estimates outcomes based on different scenarios. That works, but how many scenarios does each investor consider? Best + worst + expected = 3?

Let's walk it through a bit, let's say we're investing for only 2 years. If the home value and rent are $100,000 and $1,500 now. They might grow to $110,000 and $2,000 next year. Then the profit next year would be $16,000; If they both decrease to $90,000 and $1,000 next year, the loss would be $16,000 instead. Let's begin to really mess it up: what if home value grows and rent decreases? what if the opposite happens? what if they both grow for a year and then decrease for the following year?

As you can see, there are so many "what-if's", and scenarios can change in so many different ways with so many other variables changing. Average investors like you and me don't have the time and resources to analyze the outcome of each scenario, and hence the decisions have more "guessing" content.

On the other hand, NASA don't shoot their rocket by guessing alone. They simulate each possibility and so able to analyze what is the expected outcome, what would happen within 90% confidence then? Questions like that are more valuable when making decision under uncertainty than simply saying "xxx pro said it's going to go up for sure".

I've been dying to see something like that revolutionizes our real estate market for years. I've found nothing. However, recently, I come across with this start-up that maybe our best bet for making better-informed decision in the future. Althought far from perfect, they make it easy for investor like me to mix whatever I know with whatever they suggest (from their best knowledge thru research) to simulate what might happen to the profits (both before and after tax), affordability and risks of my investment in 5 or 10 years. Tool like this really make sophisticated technology at the finger tips of not-so-pro investor like me. For this, I must compliment their effort in making decisions more efficient and transparent.

That being said, I still don't like the color theme and styling of their website.

In case you're interested too, houseminers.com/HousingProjects is the tool I was talking about