Strategy in finding properties

[Luka Jozic]

Hello everyone,

I am just starting out my REI in the US and have done a lot of research of different areas that I am interested in and want to start looking for properties in some of these areas. I wanted to ask which of the following two strategies you guys think is the best, or maybe even both?

It seems like the conventional way is to reach out to an agent in the area, explain your goals and criteria and have them find properties for you.

However, as a software engineer I was thinking of creating a program/bot that could basically do the following:
1. Go on zillow or trulia, search for properties that match my criteria
2. For every property, find the estimated income by going either finding it in the description or checking the size/beds/baths info and pull a price from rentometer or something similar.

3. Calculate monthly expenses and then calculate cashflow

4. If crime data is available, check that too.

5. Could add other steps such as searching for keywords in description for example.

5. Save all the properties that pass the preceding steps to a CSV file.

Obviously there are some limitations. The bot can only search public websites and not MLS. The bot doesn't quite know which areas are good/bad. Furthermore, the bot will have a hard time analyzing pictures and/or the state of the property, but it can at least run numbers to find properties that have potential.

Now, do you guys think this would be useful at all or is it better to just let a realtor do the work?

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Luka Jozic:

If it's not too much trouble and it floats your boat, why not?

I think you'll still put as much effort into personal research as you would without the bot, but it's your time and energy. The bot can potentially collect a lot of data quickly, but it can't really evaluate the finer details of real estate, which is why Zillow will never take over my real estate job.