Scraping the Web for Deals

[Christopher V.]

(This the right forum for this? Not sure, but here goes.)

Hey all, I just wrote a little script to scrape the interweb for information on addresses I give it. Being a programmer, I didn't really want to spend all the time navigating my county's tax assessor's site for dozens of addresses at a time, so I made a script to do it for me.

Anyhow, the short of it comes down to a pretty simple question: What am I looking for?

When I pull up the property record, I get all kinds of information, which is cool, but I don't really know how to decipher it to know if it's worth my time contacting the owners.

I went driving around for about an hour the other day and compiled a list of about 20 potentially vacant properties (not much, I know), but now what? Do I even need to filter out anything about the assessed value, sales information, year built, anything like that? (Looking at one on my list, the assessed value is $115,950, but it has some RMV stuff as well. The last purchase price was in 2009 without a price given, then 2008 at $190k. What does that even mean to me?)

What do you guys look for after you go driving for dollars?

[Robert Laird]

Christopher,

Congrats on writing the script to scrape the tax assessor sites! I use a program to scrape zillow and the criteria that we use is single family homes, under $400,000, not sold in the past 5 years, built earlier than 1990, and having a price difference between asking price and zestimate of at least +$30,000. I do not know what kind of properties you like to invest in but I am sure you can tailor the program to your specifications. 

If I were you I would take those vacant property addresses and run them through the county GIS system to try and find the owners. Then send them a letter in the mail asking to buy their vacant property. After you drive for dollars your pretty much looking for anyone who will sell their property for a deal that you can afford. 

I hope this helps and happy hunting!

Rob