Defining your Property MVP: What is an MVP?

A quick comparison

I love technology, especially the way that technology has evolved the way we look at product management. Let’s look at car companies for example. They create large batches of vehicles before receiving any feedback from their clients. In bad scenarios, this could result in product recalls. In the world of tech, new approaches to project management have accelerated project successes.

When setting up a new company, one of the first goals is to establish what is called an MVP or minimal viable product. Early on they define a basic product that will meet specific user goals with *ideally* a low budget. The Minimum Viable Property will be tested by actual clients until they get enough information from their user base to define the products main purpose. It is important to keep the product simple to keep the company alive until it is sustainable.

This is a great approach to exploring real estate investment options as well. This is your first look into your project finances. Your Property MVP is a living, breathing entity. Every new detail you discover about a property has the potential to ‘make or break’ the project. This MVP is guided by your scope. When performing due diligence on the upcoming properties and you see they don’t fit into the definition of your soon to be formed MVP model. It isn’t the property for you.

Wants vs. Needs

We are going to start by defining our scope which will ultimately help us identify our Property MVP. When we talk about scope, we are talking about defining criteria. Here are a few examples of real estate criteria:

• # of Bedrooms
• # of Bathrooms
• Size (SF)
• Location
• Price Range
• Self-maintaining
• Courtyard
• Garage
• Just to name a few…

You will know better than me what your needs and wants are regarding the criteria of this investment and may have different criteria on your list. We are going to complete an activity that will help you prioritize this criteria. The result will be your Property MVP or in other words, your basic needs. Let me be clear, what are needs for one person might not be for another.

To do this I am going to refer to the picture below. This is a clip taken from my ‘How to buy an Italian Villa on Auction Checklist.’ If you haven’t grabbed it already, you can do so now.

1. Let’s start with Step 1. List as many needs and wants as you can. It doesn’t matter how absurd it seems, if you can think it, write it down.
2. Next we are going to assign points to the left of each. Give a score from 1 – 3 to each item based on importance and preference. Think about why you are buying the property
• Give 1 point to unnecessary wants
• Give 2 points to strong preferences
• Give 3 points to required needs
3. Highlight the 3 pointers (Your MVP Definition)

If you did thought through this well, you have successfully defined your Property MVP. These are the top criteria that should justify your project budget expenses. If you keep this spreadsheet available when proceeding through the next steps, you’ll be able to weigh which properties can be considered worthy to be your ideal investment. You can even add them up and use the overall score to see which property has more of what you are looking for. I’ve prepared a google sheets template if you’d prefer to use that.

I know it seems simple at the moment. Believe me, now that you have written it down, it will be harder to stray from it.