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Many seasoned investors will tell you: choosing the right time is crucial to acquiring real estate at a lower cost. However, if ordinary individuals could not monitor the evolution of the price of a property before, this is no longer the case today. Castorus, an ingenious extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers, allows you to closely monitor ads published on sites like lodging. This tool will definitely help you grab the best investment opportunities.
What is Castorus used for?
Castorus is a free tool for monitoring the history of advertisements published by major real estate agencies. It therefore greatly facilitates the search for an apartment, a house or even land for sale. Users can refine their searches by selecting the region they are interested in. In addition, information on each property for sale is regularly updated. Thus, you can also follow the evolution of the price of a property that has caught your attention.
The tool can present you with a graph and therefore provides valuable information to investors wishing to increase their real estate assets. By choosing the best time to acquire the property they are interested in, the buyer will be able to make significant savings. Enough to amortize the costs of the procedure.
How to use Castorus?
As mentioned above, this is an extension intended for Chrome and Firefox. To install it, go to the Chrome Web Store or the Firefox Add-ons store. Once on the main page, all you have to do is search to find Castorus. Its installation is free and will not require you to carry out complex manipulations. To ensure that the tool works correctly, be sure to update your web browser.
Once installed, the tool remembers the ads you view during your searches. Your browsing data will be used to populate a database which will be used to display the history of the referenced properties. Castorus relies on thousands of users. In this sense, you will already be able to appreciate the evolution of the price of a property the first time you consult the corresponding ad.
In any case, if the property in question has already been referenced by Castorus, the plug-in will display below the ad a small window where you will discover the sections “Dashboard”, “Funding”, “Members” and » Statistics « .
You will obtain the information that may interest you in “Dashboard”. You will discover the latest modifications made to the ad, the current price per square meter as well as the evolution of this price expressed as a percentage. Of course, you also have a graph summarizing the fluctuations in the price of the property.
In “Financing”, you will have an estimate of the total amount to pay to acquire the property. This includes agency fees and notary fees. In addition, you will be able to have an overview of the interest rate and monthly payments requested by a credit organization if you are considering taking out a real estate loan.
In “Members”, you will know the number of Castorus users who viewed the ad. And in “Statistics”, the tool tells you the average time for this type of property to find a buyer.
Good to know : the official Castorus website could be more useful for those looking for property in a given region. Indeed, those interested will see most of the advertisements referenced there. Carrying out your research on this portal could well save everyone from a huge waste of time. However, users will be required to register to carry out in-depth investigations. In this sense, the platform will ask the interested party for a valid, but unused, email address. A request that may cause concern.
How does Castorus manage to stay free?
The Castorus economic model is particularly interesting. It collects information about goods for sale through a large community. According to officials, the extension does not store users’ personal data. The fact remains that the company could possibly collaborate with real estate agencies to highlight the advertisements published by the latter.
For now, users will guess quite easily that the company counts construction companies and certainly building professionals among its partners. Indeed, the tool allows anyone to request a quote for refurbishment work on a house for sale. Castorus should therefore receive commissions for each quote that leads to the completion of the work.
In addition, the extension also serves as a credit comparator. By clicking on “Find the cheapest loan”, you can carry out a simulation in order to find the most affordable loan offer. Here again, Castorus should be entitled to commissions which will at least allow it to ensure the maintenance of its servers.
From which sites do the ads referenced by Castorus come?
The advertisements presented by Castorus correspond for the most part to advertisements published on professional sites dedicated to real estate transactions. In this sense, data from SeLoger and the sites of different agencies are of course processed.
Due to the provisions of the GDPR, the tool does not take into consideration offers from individuals. According to current regulations, these advertisements are considered personal data. Consequently, they deserve special measures to avoid any practice endangering the privacy of citizens.
It is for this reason in particular that certain announcements published on Leboncoin were no longer referenced by Castorus for a few months. Called to order by the CNIL in this case, Castorus had to modify its data policy.
Alternatives to Castorus?
The services offered by Castorus are nothing new. However, its “competitors” mostly offer a paid subscription which is therefore not suitable for occasional users. Among similar free tools, Petits Cailloux Immobilier stood out for a little while. However, the tool that the agency proposed quickly became a victim of its success. It had shown signs of failure and the information provided was no longer reliable. In this context, no free real estate tracking tool matches Castorus so far.
Despite everything, web extensions and applications useful to real estate investors continue to multiply. Moreover, the health crisis has pushed more and more players to develop IT solutions adapted to this very particular context. Still, individuals wishing to strike a good deal can today count on the mobile utilities offered by boncoin, MeilleureTaux or even Patrim. These will allow one way or another to carry out a real estate transaction under the best conditions.
Buying real estate together
You want to invest in real estate as a group, then you will have to create a Real Estate Company (SCI). It is a civil company whose purpose is real estate, which allows several people to hold shares, and therefore to be owners of part of the different real estate assets.build your assets by creating a sci
These SCIs allow you to have a legal framework for your investment and to easily know the shares in the property that each person has. Members of the same family can create an SCI to invest in real estate. It is very practical for the purchase of a second home, or the buyout by partners. If the heritage is important, the SCI will also improve inheritance and donations to children.
The procedure for creating
IN France, to create an SCI, you must follow the same procedure as for any company. You must draw up your statutes, publish a legal announcement in a suitable newspaper, register your statutes at the business formalities center and at the Registry of the Commercial Court. Do not hesitate to be accompanied by professionals for this creation in order to avoid easily avoidable errors with an accountant, a notary or a specialized firm.
You can create your SCI in less than 48 hours directly online, but you will need all the necessary documents for this. Do not hesitate to consult sites to have all the necessary explanations and to be able to quickly start investing in real estate.
