We are now live on  RealEstateJournal.com, the real estate section of the Wall Street Journal online. For those who don’t know, WSJ.com is one of the fastest growing online news sites. According to its own numbers, WSJ.com hosted 15 million unique visitors in March 2008, a 175% increase over March 2007. It’s real estate section is one of the most popular sections of the site. RealEstateJournal.com targets real estate buyers, sellers and professionals and providers visitors with editorial reporting alongside property search and research tools.

The eRealInvestor’s Property Analyzer is accessible from the toolkit section of the Wall Street Journal’s real estate section home page (the toolkit is located in the right-hand column below the Marketplace section).

You can also checkout the Property Analyzer by visiting: http://www.erealinvestor.com/w/dowjones.html

eRealInvestor offers real estate investors a powerful and comprehensive list of graphs and tools that allow them to evaluate investment properties. Some of these include:

• Price/ Sq Ft: Price per Square Foot is a commonly used metric to compare properties.
• Rent/ Sq Ft: Rent per Square Foot is another commonly used metric to compare properties.
• Pre-tax Annual Cash-on-cash return: measures the annual total cash received by the investor relative to the total investment in the property, before taxes.
• Post-tax Annual Cash-on-cash return: measures the annual total cash received by the investor relative to the total investment in the property, after taxes.
• Cap rate: the ratio of the net income produced by a property and its price.
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR): the annualized effective compounded return rate which can be earned on the invested capital.
• Gross Rent Multiplier (GRM): the ratio of the price of a property to its annual rental income before all expenses, including property taxes, property management, insurance, etc.
• Rent Ratio: the ratio of the monthly rental income for a property to its price.
• Pre-tax Annual Cash Flow: measures the total cash returned to the investor during the calendar year, after financing costs, but before taxes.
• Pre-tax Monthly Cash Flow: measures the total cash returned to the investor during the average month, after financing costs, but before taxes.
• Post-tax Annual Cash Flow: measures the total cash returned to the Investor during the calendar year, after financing costs and taxes.
• Post-tax Monthly Cash Flow: measures the total cash returned to the investor during the average month, after financing costs and taxes.
• Equity in Property: measures the total equity owned by the Investor in the current year, including property value escalation, repaid loan principal, and property improvements.
• Future Property Value: represents the Fair Market Value of the property in the current year, assuming property improvements and value escalation.
• Cap Rate Implied by NOI/ Price: derives the property “Cap Rate” by dividing the property’s actual Net Operating Income (NOI), or income after expenses and taxes by the property price.

You can visit our glossary for information on some of these investment terms.

We recently sponsored a study available from Personal Real Estate Investor Magazine that debunks some of the myths in the current real estate market and identifies significant opportunities.

This first-of-its-kind national study conducted by Harris Interactive, parent company of the Harris Poll, debunks ten widely held “myths” about real estate investment in this $320 billion annual market. Other sponsors of the survey include the California Association of Realtors, CyberHomes by Fidelity National Financial, Houston Association of Realtors, RE/MAX Integra and Wells Fargo Mortgage. For more information on the study, please visit the Personal Real Estate Investor Magazine website.

Mike Genstil, eRealInvestor Founder and CEO, is scheduled to speak on the Money Show on May 14^th (4:15pm – 5:00pm) on using technology to build wealth in a Real Estate downturn. This year’s Money Show, which is focused on managing investment portfolios during uncertain times, is being held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas from May 12–18, 2008.

Many of our users are real estate investors and, like many investors today, are wondering where to find the best investments. Entrepreneur magazine recently published an interesting piece on the best places to buy investment property. I like the fact that they reminded readers that real estate continues to be a good long term investment. The author looked at economic factors, crime statistics and foreclosure rates to come up with this list of top investment cities:

• Killeen, Round Rock, Austin, Texas
• Mission Viejo, California
• Palm Beach, Florida
• Las Vegas, Nevada

As one would expect, Entrepreneur Magazine also came up with a list of places to AVOID including:

• Detroit, Michigan
• Miami, Florida
• Riverside/San Bernardino, California

I found the piece to be very informative and encourage any serious real estate investors to check it out!

In the last couple of years, a rather sizeable percentage of both home sales and home purchases have occurred for for investment purposes! In 2006 for example, 40% of all home sales and 28% percent of all home purchases were made as an investment according to a report from the NAR.

Many Realtors ignore the fact that potentially 30%–40% of prospective buyers and sellers may actually be “investors”. According to the NAR, these “investment home buyers” are different from “vacation home buyers”. They tend to be younger (49 years old vs. 52 years old), have slightly lower incomes, and purchase “investment” property an average of 15 miles away from their primary residence.

Like any other investor, these buyers need tools and resources to help them with their decision making process. eRealInvestor’s powerful set of financial modeling and analysis tools allows these “investors” to save time and make better educated decisions about a property listing. eRealInvestor allows “investment home buyers” to consider the implications of different down payment and loan options, view pre-tax and post-tax scenarios, compare multiple scenarios and properties side-by-side and analyze other important financial and tax information. At the end of the day, eRealInvestor also empowers them to engage in a more effective dialogue with their Realtor and mortgage broker!

As I pointed at out in my previous post, more and more Realtors (as well as a growing number of partners) are integrating eRealInvestor’s analytics capabilities into their listings! By offering our tools, these real estate professional make their listings more appealing to investment home buyers, which is important, especially in today’s competitive marketplace! eRealInvestor frees these real estate professionals from having to creating cash flow spreadsheets for their clients. If you are interested, register to find out how simple it is to get integrated!

Over the past couple of weeks, eRealInvestor has gone live on hundreds of thousands of properties across thousands of agents’ websites. Here are some examples of how some of our partners have integrated our tools into their website offerings for real estate professionals:

• Prudential Decker Realty (Birdview)
• Praedo Homes (eHarbor)
• John Hall & Associates (Number1Expert)
• Coldwell Banker (Obeo)

If you visit these sites you will notice the flexibility we have given partners to embed our “Analyze” button into their sites. This button puts potential buyers visiting a partner’s site just one click away from the simplest, most usable real estate analysis tool available!

You will also notice how partners can create private-labeled or co-branded versions of eRealInvestor!