
Show HN: Shitty Listings algorithmically finds undervalued property - rgbrgb
http://www.shittylistings.com/
======
rgbrgb
Here's the fun regex we use to find some initial candidates in our analysis:

    
    
        val = str.match(/probate|trust.sale|short.sale|auction|cash.offers|all.cash|(sold|sale|sell|offered|purchase|comes)[^.]+as.is|as.is[^.]+(condition|sale|contract|clause)|tear.down|damage|rehab|tlc|flip|fixer|needs[^.]+work|bring[^.]+(contractor|architect|builder|decorat|designer|developer|ideas|paint|brush|investor|hammer|handy|imagination|vision|tool|plans)/i)
        nval = str.match(/(beautiful|ly|ng|has been|was|just|being|100%|just been) (rehab|remodell?ed)|^Rehabbed|rehabbed [^.]* ?(home|cottage|house|property|unit|apartment|condo)|rehab center|rehab [^.]* ?complete|flip [^.]*switch|not an? ['"\w,]*\s*(flip|fix|probate|reo|repo|short sale|foreclosure)|flip on |flipped|not looking for a \w* flip|flip ?flops|tooth ?brush|Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings/i)

~~~
joshuaheard
Is there a numerical analysis or just looking at the listing agent
description? What I look for as a real estate investor is price disparity: a
house with a much lower price than others around it. They say you make money
when you buy a house, so buying a low-priced house and bringing up to the
standards of the neighborhood has been my formula.

~~~
rgbrgb
The regex above is one signal we're using. We also look at relative price per
sqft and a number of other factors. We could do a little blogpost that goes
in-depth on our algorithm if there's interest. We've also tried some fun stuff
like running TFIDF on the descriptions [1].

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf)

~~~
joshuaheard
This could be a valuable tool. I like the clean website too. I don't see an
About page. It would be interesting to see who is doing this and what you plan
to do with it.

~~~
rgbrgb
We're Open Listings (YC W15):
[https://www.openlistings.co/](https://www.openlistings.co/)

We're trying to help people find properties they'd like to buy. We'd be happy
to help with the offer and transaction for any home in California, but we're
also happy just to provide free tools for home buyers.

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cpursley
Crazy that “shitty” listings in California are $500k and up.

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Iftheshoefits
Listings in the Bay Area are absurd. I can buy 6 (larger, better maintained)
houses almost anywhere else in the country for the price as one house that
would be a "starter home" in those same places. The opportunities and culture
in the Bay Area are better, but not 6x better than many of these other places.

~~~
Kalium
Classic supply shock.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I guess. I just can't fathom how anybody could have any information at all
about property values anywhere else and still look at the housing prices out
here and think, "Gee, it's a great idea to buy!" For most (the overwhelming
majority of) people it's much cheaper to rent than service a mortgage here,
and while there are positives to ownership (e.g. control of the property), it
strikes me as less than financially rational to believe they outweigh all the
many negatives (opportunity cost, cost of ownership, etc.).

The only _good_ reason to buy in the Bay Area is to be able to control the
property. Buying homes as an investment is risky anywhere, but it's especially
_stupid_ around here for most people, simply because the expected ROI is so
much worse for a given sum of money than can be had in almost any other
investment. Only the super (top of the top 1%) have any business putting "home
ownership" and "investment" in the same thought for this area.

~~~
mobiplayer
It is not a bad idea to buy there just as it is not a bad idea to buy in
London as opposed to cheaper areas. The prices are not only higher, but the
rate at what they were getting higher was also faster than other areas.

In other words, your investment grows faster. If you can afford to buy and
plan to sell in 2-3 years you can probably make much more money in the Bay
Area than in somewhere else.

------
creichert
Great to see more action in the real estate space. One thing I found
interesting was that you actually registered to become brokers to distribute
the data and get the commission.

I'm not surprised to see so much push-back from agents [0]. It's a pretty
competitive industry and most agents don't take it lightly when their leads
are taken :). I do feel like more technology is being adopted but I am curious
as to why real estate tech seems so behind?

I also work with real estate data on SimplyRETS
([https://simplyrets.com](https://simplyrets.com)). We aggregate data from
MLS's across the US and the state of the art is quite a mess. We took a
slightly different approach, though, in that we distribute the data to app
developers and brokers through our API and let them manage their leads.

Very cool stuff. Keep up the good work!

[0] - See comments in
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/26/openlistings/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/26/openlistings/)
and [http://www.inman.com/2015/02/27/startup-lets-you-shop-
withou...](http://www.inman.com/2015/02/27/startup-lets-you-shop-without-an-
agent-but-uses-agents/).

~~~
rgbrgb
> I do feel like more technology is being adopted but I am curious as to why
> real estate tech seems so behind?

I think it's 2 things:

1) A lot of technologists find real estate abhorrent. They know it should be
fixed but they don't want to be the ones to do it. That's fair. My thought is
that the fundamental problem of exchanging money for land is pretty cool, even
though all of the connotations of "real estate" kind of suck. So I try to
think about it from first principles... what's the ideal way to exchange money
for land?

2) It's complicated to get the data due to MLS regulations. Companies like
yours help with this, but I believe app developers still have to apply to each
MLS to legally get data from a vendor like yourself. It's not like building an
app on the Twitter or Tumblr API, you have to call the MLS office and talk to
real people (who are usually experts in real estate, not tech) and often pay
them real money. Also, I'm guessing your IDX feeds don't always include sold
properties or historical data.

~~~
creichert
> Companies like yours help with this, but I believe app developers still have
> to apply to each MLS to legally get data from a vendor like yourself.

Not necessarily, in some MLS areas we are able to distribute on behalf of the
MLS vendor. It's on a case by case basis and still requires us to ensure we
are working with a valid broker, though.

> It's not like building an app on the Twitter or Tumblr API, you have to call
> the MLS office and talk to real people (who are usually experts in real
> estate, not tech) and often pay them real money.

In general, this is true. However, we are simplifying the process :). Usually,
we are able to handle all the dirty work with the MLS vendor on behalf of the
broker. Especially in areas where we have a licensing agreement with that MLS
already. Not all MLS's support this but we are growing our reach to handle
this as smoothly as possible.

> Also, I'm guessing your IDX feeds don't always include sold properties or
> historical data.

We can only support what the MLS vendor supports but gaining access to sold
and historical has only a problem in smaller MLS areas. It usually costs more
at the MLS level, though.

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smilekzs
I played with the flipping logo for a whole good minute.

~~~
rgbrgb
Credit goes to Kevin Hale for the turd on the back side. Really pulls the
whole site together ;)

~~~
CodyReichert
Ha! I didn't even notice until this comment - that is hilarious.

~~~
rgbrgb
Credit goes to Judd Schoenholtz for insisting the turd be extremely subtle ;)

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TACIXAT
I would be really interested in seeing this data for neighborhoods. Which
neighborhoods are undervalued for the area, or which are trending upward in
terms of income.

I tried to do this a bit when I was house shopping, find a bargain in a
mediocre neighborhood that is improving in terms of crime and income. I didn't
find any great data sources besides the Cenus, and that was only really useful
going back two surveys.

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oonny
This is really neat. Now, is there a similar service for purchasing car? for
example it would be great if there is a service that looks into craigslist or
other sources and sees if there are cars available for sale that is less than
a year old, and is a total bargain. not that people invest in cars like they
do with real estate, but it would be useful for buyers that look for a deal
with cars.

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ChuckMcM
This would be an interesting application for Las Vegas, and clearly the core
of any 'flip this house' get rich scheme. But as a way of finding and
developing underperforming real estate it looks like a good start.

Adding value here will be finding ever more unstructured/invisible feeds (like
the records from the county clerk's office recording title changes).

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jayhuang
It'd be cool to be the owner/agent of a house being listed here, and seeing
how many more calls/inquiries were received as a result.

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abrookewood
What's your plan to monetise this? Do you somehow get a cut for each one sold?

~~~
jschoenholtz
[https://www.openlistings.co/](https://www.openlistings.co/)

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rajacombinator
Really nice design throughout both this site and the open listings site!

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davak
Ohhh. I want this for my area. Great idea.

~~~
rgbrgb
If you email shitty@openlistings.co with your city I'll let you know when we
come to your area (that goes for everyone). We're going for full California
coverage in the next month or so.

~~~
scottmcdot
Any chance that you will come to Melbourne, Aus?

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Untit1ed
It's probably the same chance of finding a bargain property in Melbourne :(.

~~~
rgbrgb
Always a chance but probably not in the next year ;)

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Jean-Philipe
Why are all these houses so ugly?

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ohazi
Because they're shitty?

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ars
This site is completely blank with noscript on.

~~~
themartorana
I always wonder if the developer should care? The only front-ends I write
these days are admin backends for my own company, so I very specifically don't
care.

That said, is there any data on browser share with JS turned off? Because I'm
sure I'm being obtuse, and I know I can be accused of being a dick, but I
doubt I would care very much.

My company makes mobile games. We don't support below Android 4, we don't
support below iOS 6. Not allowing JS completely is absurd, IMHO, and much like
expecting developers to continue to support IE 6. It's 2015, JS is the
programming language of the browser-based Internet, and expecting developers
to cripple their own applications to support a vanishingly small amount of
people that block JS may simply make no sense, economically speaking.

~~~
patmcguire
Accessibility. Screen readers allegedly support JS - I don't use one - but I
think we can agree it's a harder problem to solve than HMTL.

Not to get too much on my high horse, since you're clearly in an area where
there's no way you could ever support vision impairment, the problem with
ignoring vanishingly small portions of an audience is that the same people
tend to be in that portion all the time and never get anything. For apps that
aren't expecting interactions more than every ten seconds, it's so easy to
just give them flat HTML.

~~~
CJefferson
Nowadays screen readers are fine with the full-blown web, JS and all. The
bigger practical issue is simpler things, like not putting alt tags on
pictures, or abusing pictures (I saw a stupid website which put alt tags on
spacer gifs).

~~~
juliangregorian
Empty alt tags? Because that is what should be on spacer gifs. Of course,
using spacer gifs is kinda 2004.

