How do you pull comps?

[Kyle Soudalan]

Even though I've bought several rental properties over the years, I always feel like an amateur when I first look at a deal and try to pull comps. It feels like manually comparing it to other properties in the area on Zillow or via the MLS is inefficient, prone to missing certain details, or cumbersome to scroll up and down numerous pages.

How does everyone else go about pulling comps? Is there a strategy you always use when analyzing a new deal? Do you have some template you follow or spreadsheet of columns you always fill out to run particular calculations? Or do you have a way to quickly filter out a lot of properties before taking a closer, manual look at each

Being a software engineer, I'm itching to write code to help myself more efficiently pull comps and run more advanced analyses. But I'd love to know what everyone else's pain points have been to see if I built such a software, it would have value to anyone else here.