Real Estate Listing Analysis Software?

Question

Hi all,

I'm interested in finding tools that will pull data from the MLS into a spreadsheet and also estimate historical rental data for addresses using rentometer - I'd like to establish a simple threshold of $/month cost (est. loan + HOA) to estimated rent $/month to identify properties.  I'm guessing there are existing proprietary tools that do this you can buy, so wanted to go that route before I spent a couple days programming something on my own.  Thanks!

Shan K. · Answer

@Robert You accurately identified the issue with such tool. To solve the problem every realtor should be  able to pull the data for the MLS using their own user account. There are many apps and websites and apps that import data from MLS. So the problem is solved for people with MLS access.

For all other users the data can be pulled from  Zillow, Trulia which have API. Another way is to write a HTML parsing script to extract the data from Realtor.com which has the comprehensive listings.

I want to build following tools

1. app which allows user to capture any address  using camera does a OCR and pull all the data related to that property

2. A browser plug in that automatically highlights all the valid address on a HTML page and gives context menu to click and takes to a page that brings in all the data about that property.

I want to develop an interest list of potential users who want to use such a product. I would also to invite user to give their wish list of features so that I can come with list of features and develop a project plan and schedule.

This could be crowdsourced not for profit project. I seriously looking for an affordable tool that can cut down my deal analysis time.

Cheers

Shan

Robert Bonderer · Answer

As far as I can tell now, the reason why something like this doesn't currently exist is because of restrictions on access to MLS data.  As of now, your only option to accessing MLS data is through all the individual local MLS', which as far as I can tell is restricted to realtors and to their clients through (frequently shitty) MLS portals.  The other option is accessing MLS data through third-party website like Zillow, redfin, or other small realtor web portals.  The issue here is that data scrapping these websites in a dirty word in the real estate community, and essentially all of these sites have protections against data mining. So the limitations to the software appear to be primarily related to the restriction of access to data, rather than the lack of folks out there willing to develop the methods.  It'd be really interesting to do nationwide data analyses of price:rent ratios and other screening factors to find outliers, but sounds like that's not in the cards.

Steve S. · Answer

Sounds very complicated. If you're just looking in your local markets then I imagine doing it yourself would be the best thing. The chances that someone out there developed the software for such a niche product is highly unlikely.

Anna Eberhardt · Answer

I'm also interested in learning if there software like this exists.  And, if so, would it be regional based since MLS data is local?  We are thinking of developing something like this for our local market.