Twenty years ago participants in the real estate investment process relied on a calculator and amortization schedule to create the analysis required to make informed investment decisions.

With the advent of the computer, however, real estate investment and participants in the investment arena has witnessed substantive change in the methods of analysis used in the real estate investment business.

Though the real estate investment decision process will continue to rely upon information retrieved from primary and secondary data sources, information is increasingly available that can be accessed via personal computers, and real estate investment software programs make it easier then ever to create and print a variety of investment reports.

For example, thanks to the computer, real estate investors and investment firms focused on the purchase, holding, and sale of investment properties are now able to use a variety of computer programs and real estate software solutions to compute and track the income, expenses, and cash flows of owned properties that assist with a myriad of investment analysis decisions.

Spreadsheet software is used, but it does involve a degree of spreadsheet experience and time for it to be useful in investment analysis.

As a result, those with less experience or less time available to devote to spreadsheets, are turning to proven and ready made investment analysis real estate software applications that are used in conjunction with the spreadsheet software.

These real estate investment software programs are easier to use because they require only the entry of information rather than the development of mathematical formulas or other algorithms that spreadsheets may require, and might offer–as does our real estate investment software–a variety of analytical diversity to support financial feasibility such as:

1. Computations and tables for time value of money.
2. Mortgage analysis with calculations made for mortgage payments under a variety of interest rates and amortization terms with both partial and full amortization schedules.
3. Depreciation schedules that provide information on annual depreciation deductions unique to a specific acquisition date of the investment.
4. Tax shelter computations that may provide outcomes resulting in lower income tax liability.
5. Computations for discounted cash flow that analyze an investment over the entire proposed holding period such as internal rate of return based on the investor’s initial equity contributions and net present value of equity based upon anticipated future equity returns; other various ratios, multipliers, and rule-of-thumb indicators.

With the rapid growth of the information superhighway computer-assisted real estate analysis and real estate investing software has become commonplace because the fast-paced investment process involves a more sophisticated understanding of an investment’s forecast performance.

Real estate software is in the future for real estate investment because it has greatly accelerated the ability to facilitate this increasingly more complex investment analysis.