Viability of Zillow/Redfin For Full Multifamily Deals?

[Joey Gorombey]

Hi All,

As I begin my real-estate investing journey, I am primarily interested in house-hacking within Kansas City, MO. How did some of you guys find multifamily properties? Were you guys able to transform Zillow/Redfin hits into pursuits on deals, or successful deals?  It seems like that's what most people would do -- expect a couple keystrokes to yield a good deal. 

And it feels like that's what I'm doing: expecting third party results to be some kind of magic trick. My instinct is telling me I'm doing things wrong: that third party sites offer neither unique data, nor fresh data, and that I'm wasting my time browsing them. I've got a part of my brain telling me that this is the easy thing to do, and that real deals probably take a bit more digging. Am I totally incorrect? Have some of you used these third party sites to great effect? If a third party site wasn't the impetus for your first house hack, what was? Eager to hear stories!