So I have been seeing platforms like Spotlight Realty gaining a lot of traction, offering full-service listings at 4% for landlords using AI tools to pre-screen renters and schedule showings.

As someone managing a few units, I’m tempted. Have any of you tried these models? 

I’m looking for a real estate data tool with a robust API that can help identify active investors — ideally those doing fix & flips, value-add projects, or interested in ADU opportunities.

I’ve already checked out Realestateapi, DealMachine, etc., but I’m hoping to find more options that allow API access for lead integration into my CRM.

If you’re using a tool that makes it easier to filter for investor types or project focus, I’d love to hear your experience.

I spent the last year working with some friends on what's basically a free version of Re:Venture -- It was part aspirational business (had some minor success and a few subscribers), part coding practice, but now we're happier to just share it out for free to as many people as possible.

If you've been put off on paying $40 a month for this kind of data, we hope you'll enjoy playing around with this tool!

Just wondering what the go-to sources are for residential real estate business strategy, advice, tech reviews, etc? I feel like Inman has changed a lot over the last couple of years. What are your other sources of reliable info / perspective?

I'm struggling with the idea of LLMs being that source. The amalgamation of a whole bunch of ideas without providing the unique perspective of someone / some entity I can trust feels oddly unhelpful.

Where are you reading / watching?

This is a common question on Reddit... and it gets a lot of responses with various percentage rules of take-home pay vs. mortgage....

But that misses the fact that every single property is different. For a single family home in a high climate risk area, a mortgage might ony be 60% of your expenses. Existing calculators don't do a good job of helping people understand their true cost of ownership upfront AND over time, so we built incomp.app to help people plan ahead and avoid future surprises. Almost all regrets of homeownership stem from unexpected costs of ownership... but it doesn't need to be this way.

Just paste a listing at incomp.app and it will include:

• property tax override if the listing taxes fall outside our model threshold (1/3 of listings have old taxes that are likely to go up significantly within a year)
• insurance estimates based on FEMA's National Risk Index for that census tract
• upkeep estimates and monthly saving guidelines (based on age of home, type, location, reno, etc...)
• tax deductions (based on income and filing status for property tax and mortgage interest deduction, including caps)
• buy vs. rent (that includes opportunity cost of downpayment and all relevant factors)
• affordability metrics, utilities (based on state and home size), full cost chart over time

*Note this is only for the US.

has anyone used rentcast listings api? i’m working on creating a regional housing dashboard and was hoping to use it to show active listings- that being said it feels a little too good to be true. although their terms of service say this data can be used for any purpose, i don’t understand how this is true especially because all other similar technologies and apis prohibit the storing of their data. additionally i was wondering how accurate the listings portion of this data is- if anyone has any experience with it i’d love to hear about it!

thanks

Hello! I’ve started to dip my toes into the cold calling realm of real estate. I am looking for a solid cold calling software that has a multi-dialing function and a CRM like quality to their lists. RedX seems to have all of the functionality but when I tried it a lot of the phones were either not correct or were on the DND list.

What’s been your experience with RedX?

Are there any other solid solutions out there?

Thank you in advance!

Hey everyone,

The amount of time and effort it takes to manually enter, update, and validate listing information across multiple platforms like the MLS, Zillow, and databases, seems draining... It feels like a constant battle to ensure all the details are accurate and synchronized, and it's easy for small errors to slip through.

What if there was a way to automate the data entry and validation process, ensuring all your listings are consistent and up-to-date everywhere with minimal manual effort? How much time could you save, and what kind of impact would that have on your day-to-day work?

I'm genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. What's the most frustrating part of managing your listing data across different systems? Do you know of existing systems that already does this?

I’m trying to learn more about the day-to-day of working leads in real estate.

My current assumption is, that realtors spent a lot of time keeping track of conversation especially across multiple channels (email, WhatsApp, phone, facebook) and that some leads stale or sometimes eat up time for little to no outcome. And that the more personalized the conversation is, the higher the success rate.

• What channels do you use to communicate with leads?
• Do you want to reply quickly, but you end up digging through different inboxes and notes just to remember their budget, move-in date, and what you already sent them?
• How do you currently keep all client conversations and details organized?
• Do you sometimes find yourself spending too much time on the same conversations?

I would really appreciate your thoughts :)

Looking into the printing costs now and it's not cheap due to it being a different file for each postcard. If you've done it, how were the returns and can you recommend a reasonably priced print service will mail it as well?

Hey guys,

I'm building a sold property comp tool that'll show nearby comps including sold price / date and need this all in one endpoint. I'm having an issue finding a solid API provider to provide accurate and up-to-date information, but also having this in 1 single endpoint.

I used RentCast, however, the information exists in 2 endpoints. I will first do an API call to pull nearby comps and then do a secondary API call as the last sold price/date exists in another endpoint. There's issues mapping the sold price/date into the list that was pulled from the first API call, so everything breaks. I reached out to their support requesting a custom endpoint or if they can include sold price/date in the nearby comps endpoint but they said no.

I'm using Mashvisor but am having continuously trouble getting accurate information from their API. I'm working with their support now to get this resolved.

I was curious if anyone here has any recommendations for reliable and accurate API providers for my use case.

Curious how different realtors are utilizing video currently as it seems to be increasingly common and important. Obivously I see a lot of people sharing on Instagram TikTok or YouTube which is a no brainer imo, but what about on listing sites or on your personal website? Not like everyone says 'im going to go browse videos on tiktok to find a house to tour.

Seems like there is a big opportunity for comapnies like Compass or Remax to provide a way to add videos to the listings since it's a way better experience than just looking at pictures, but from what I can tell there's not a 'go-to solution'?

is it illegal to create a webscraper tool for zillow/craigslist, or maybe a different method, that given a link to a certain rental property, it imports data from that rental including sqft, bed bath, price and other info into an sql/spreadsheet? and how far could i go with a project like this?

I’m looking for a dead-simple dialer. All I need is:

1. The ability to import leads via CSV
2. A basic interface to make calls
3. A way to export stats or call outcomes

That’s it. No complicated CRM. No AI. No fluff.

I was leaning toward JustCall, but the onboarding experience has been awful, I couldn’t even create a free account without them asking for all kinds of documentation after waiting 10 hours for a response. It’s been a headache just trying to sign up.

Mojo is overpriced for what I need, and I’m not looking for anything fancy.

I’m seriously debating building my own tool at this point… but I’d rather not reinvent the wheel if something decent already exists.

What are you using that actually works and doesn’t make you want to scream?

Is there any good software with an API that i can use to parse t-12 & rent roll documents?

I would also be curious i effective are the different AI tools (openai, claude, etc.) at reading these documents. How accurate are they?

Would it be difficult to build my own tool that can analyze these documents?

I have some technical knowledge, not overly knowledgable in world of AI & LLMs though.

Thanks

It seems like I get one of these scam texts every day offering referrals for a referral fee at closing. Of course the catch is, there is always a "one time setup fee" a few hundred dollars - just enough to get people to fall for the scam. Never have - never will.

I think you can do better working a database, social media and farming a neighborhood(s), than ANY of the referral sources can provide. I include Zillow and Realtor.com. I know people that had paid them $10,000's, but the ROI rarely if ever works out.

Is anyone currently, and I stress currently, doing any real business from a paid referral source? If so, what is the company's name and what do they charge? What is your ROI? What is the time commitment? What percentage of leads, close over 1 year?

I'm working on a project, trying to get business for my friend.

I basically need to find owner names and phone numbers that recently sold their homes or are for sale.

I can try to scrape realtor or zillow but i can get the address only and property details.

How do I get the owner phone number, not the agent?

I don't mind paying if data is good.

I tried to buy some "leads" for my county and they wanted 800$ Wtf, why so expensive?

I’ve started to use chat GPT to ask questions about particular areas when I am researching and found that along with the general basics, it gives me a good starting point to find information like upcoming developments, industries in the area, new major projects etc.

Aside from the basics I haven’t really worked out how to broaden my search or really what I can actually use it for. Does anyone do anything similar or have any insights onto what more I could do?

Can you describe what the most advanced AI system specifically designed for CMA in the U.S. real estate market should look like? I’ve begun developing a solution for our AI realtor project, but I want to surpass the limitations of existing tools and build something truly exceptional. The system should address key challenges for both buyers—such as pricing confidence and transparency—and realtors by saving time, reducing manual work, and delivering impressive, high-quality reports.

What is the main problem that current solutions fail to solve? Should the system be agentic? If anyone is interested in a technical collaboration, I’m open to connecting.

I'm a property manager tired of:

• Paying $200+/month for software that's 90% features I don't use
• Simple tasks requiring 10 clicks
• "Contact us for pricing" (aka it's stupidly expensive)
• Desktop-only software in 2024
• Being held hostage by vendor lock-in

So I'm building my own and making it open-source/free.

The reality: It would be self-hosted (you run it on your own server/cloud). Not SaaS.

Planned features:

• Tenant/lease management
• Maintenance requests
• Rent tracking
• Document storage
• Basic reporting
• Mobile-first design
• API for integrations
• Multi-property support

Questions:

1. Would you realistically self-host? (It'll be dockerized for easy deployment)
2. What features are absolutely essential? I want to build what PMs actually use daily, not bloatware.
3. What's your biggest workflow pain point?
4. For those using AppFolio/Buildium/etc - what's the ONE thing they do well that I shouldn't mess up?

I'm building this regardless for my own 100-unit portfolio, but wondering if I should put in the extra effort to make it production-ready for others vs just making it work for me.

Edit: Yes, I know self-hosting is a barrier. But it's the only way to make it truly free and give you full control of your data.

Hey folks,

I keep hearing about AI chatbots for real estate — supposedly they can answer buyer questions 24/7, learn from listings, push leads into CRMs, and even book inspections once they understand intent.

On paper that sounds great, but I keep wondering: if buyers can already filter listings by price, location, and size, and most sites already have “Book Inspection” links and contact forms… is there really a gap here?

Curious what people in the industry think — is this actually valuable, or just another tech idea looking for a problem?

Thanks :)

Does there exist a lease building api/ integration where I can allow my users to generate rental lease agreements? I’m not finding a great solution for helping landlords build lease agreements without them using a whole PM software to do so.

Been on Wise Agent for about 8 months now and while it's decent for the price, I feel like I'm still cobbling together a bunch of other tools to make everything work smoothly.

Currently also using: - Calendly for scheduling (WA's scheduling is clunky) - Some random lead scoring spreadsheet I made - Manual follow-up reminders

The automation in WA doesn't seem smart enough right. Like it can send emails on a schedule but it can't tell if someone's actually engaged or ready to move forward. I end up manually managing the important leads anyway.

What's everyone else layering on top of their main CRM? Especially curious about if anything that helps prioritize which leads to call first / follow ups.

Or should I just be looking at a completely different CRM? What's handy?