How do you decide which MLS listings to call on first?
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Realtor · Hanover Twp, PA · Member since 2018 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes
5mo@Pal Ram, a few thoughts:
1. It can be HARD to find a good deal on the MLS!
2. The items you mention are things that can be filtered or searched for. So, everyone can find those pretty easily.
3. With the MLS especially it could be less obvious things that allow you to make a deal.
4. Example #1: A difficult tenant situation. If you are an agent you might see private remarks on listings meant only for other agents. It might say "No showings because the tenant won't permit".
To some people that is a problem, but to others that is an opportunity! No showings means less competition and a more distressed seller.
5. Example #2: TIME! I have seen listings pop up on the MLS at inopportune time. A wholesaler or inexperienced agent might place a listing on the MLS on Friday afternoon leading into a holiday weekend. With few agents and buyers looking at houses that weekend. You have an opportunity to make an offer and use time to your advantage.
6. Sometimes listings agents slip up! Sometimes it isn't even the MLS listing but talking to the listing agent they give up some information about the seller's situation or motivations that can make a deal possible.
7. Sometimes its identifying a listing that is NOT well represented by their agent! A lazy or inexperienced agent is not able to serve their client well and that can create a buying opportunity.
8. Searching OUT OF AREA MLS databases! Sometimes agents list properties somewhat outside their normal area but only place the listing in their home MLS. That gives it somewhat less exposure depending on where you search for listings.
26 Replies
- Realtor · Hanover Twp, PA · Member since 2018 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes5mo
@Pal Ram, a few thoughts:
1. It can be HARD to find a good deal on the MLS!
2. The items you mention are things that can be filtered or searched for. So, everyone can find those pretty easily.
3. With the MLS especially it could be less obvious things that allow you to make a deal.
4. Example #1: A difficult tenant situation. If you are an agent you might see private remarks on listings meant only for other agents. It might say "No showings because the tenant won't permit".
To some people that is a problem, but to others that is an opportunity! No showings means less competition and a more distressed seller.
5. Example #2: TIME! I have seen listings pop up on the MLS at inopportune time. A wholesaler or inexperienced agent might place a listing on the MLS on Friday afternoon leading into a holiday weekend. With few agents and buyers looking at houses that weekend. You have an opportunity to make an offer and use time to your advantage.
6. Sometimes listings agents slip up! Sometimes it isn't even the MLS listing but talking to the listing agent they give up some information about the seller's situation or motivations that can make a deal possible.
7. Sometimes its identifying a listing that is NOT well represented by their agent! A lazy or inexperienced agent is not able to serve their client well and that can create a buying opportunity.
8. Searching OUT OF AREA MLS databases! Sometimes agents list properties somewhat outside their normal area but only place the listing in their home MLS. That gives it somewhat less exposure depending on where you search for listings.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Kevin SobiloThis is really useful — especially the point about signals that aren’t easily filterable. The private remarks angle is interesting, listing timing I hadn’t thought about at all. On the agent quality piece — is that something you’re actively evaluating when you see a listing, or more of a gut feel after years of seeing the same agents? Curious whether you’d want that surfaced automatically or whether it loses something when it’s not your own read on the agent.
- Realtor · Hanover Twp, PA · Member since 2018 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes5mo
Quote from @Pal Ram:
@Kevin SobiloThis is really useful — especially the point about signals that aren’t easily filterable. The private remarks angle is interesting, listing timing I hadn’t thought about at all. On the agent quality piece — is that something you’re actively evaluating when you see a listing, or more of a gut feel after years of seeing the same agents? Curious whether you’d want that surfaced automatically or whether it loses something when it’s not your own read on the agent.
With agent quality, its hard to define all the ways that might show up. I'll give a couple examples I have experienced:
1. An agent misrepresents the property. I have seen properties where they don't count bedrooms because they don't have closets or are walk-thru bedrooms. You can often catch misrepresentations by looking at assessment records or even old expired listings. Agents have access to more data in the MLS database, so they can view details of old listings. So, they may compare the listing from 5 years ago to the current one.
2. An agent might be from another area. An agent representing a low priced listing a distance from their normal area may not wish to give it the attention they normally would.
3. In most cases though the agent quality probably becomes most apparent when you start to get into negotiating. So, it comes up less with initial screening and more with bringing a deal together.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Kevin Sobilo This is really useful — especially the out-of-area agent angle and the historical listing comparison. Those are things I wouldn't have thought to look for manually but make complete sense once you point them out.
Quick follow-up: when you factor all of this together on a given morning, how long does your full evaluation process actually take before you decide which listings are worth pursuing? And is that something you do yourself or do you have someone helping filter?
Asking because I'm trying to understand whether the bottleneck is finding the signals or synthesizing them into a decision.
- Real Estate Broker · Atlanta · Member since 2024 · 1k+ posts · 605 votes5mo
@Pal Ram Most experienced flippers start with filters but over time it becomes a mix of system and instinct. The key is tightening your criteria like the DOM, price reductions, investor-friendly remarks and targeting specific price points and neighborhoods so you are not reviewing everything. That said, it is best to work closely with an investor-friendly agent who can pre-filter deals, flag true opportunities and get you in early before others catch on. That alone can eliminate a lot of the guesswork and missed deals.
- Member since 2026 · 4 posts · 1 vote5mo
Kevin hit the nail on the head regarding those "hidden" distress signals like difficult tenants, private remarks, or Friday afternoon listing dumps. The issue is, like Pal mentioned, trying to manually spot those specific scenarios among hundreds of listings every morning is a massive bottleneck and leads to decision fatigue.
The investors who are scaling past the "gut feel" stage are actually turning Kevin's manual filters into programmatic scoring systems. Instead of scrolling for two hours, you can pipe your MLS feed (or scrape the public portals) directly into a backend workflow (using something like n8n or Make.com).
The logic is pretty straightforward to set up:
- Pull all active listings updated in the last 24 hours.
- Run the property descriptions and remarks through an LLM specifically prompted to flag distress keywords ("tenant occupied," "as-is," "bring all offers," or even analyzing the text for lazy agent descriptions).
- Have the workflow calculate a "Motivation Score" (e.g., DOM > 45 = +10 points, 2nd Price Cut = +15 points, AI flags "tenant issue" = +30 points).
- Have the system automatically text you just the top 5 highest-scoring properties at 7:00 AM.
It turns a 2-hour manual grind into a 5-minute review of highly qualified leads. If you ever want to bounce ideas around on how to actually architect the data extraction and API connections for a pipeline like this, feel free to shoot me a message. I build these kinds of data workflows for a living and always love talking shop on real estate tech!
- Real Estate Agent · Kansas City · Member since 2018 · 4k+ posts · 3k+ votes5mo
I always send out and target ones that are newly listed that may work (whether at list price or below) or look at ones that have recently adjusting prices. Every week I will look at certain cities and zip codes, see what is still sitting.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Janice Carter That makes sense — sounds like the agent relationship becomes the real filter over time. Quick question: when you were earlier in your investing career before you had that network built out, how were you handling the morning MLS review? Was it as chaotic as it sounds for most people starting out?
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Caleb Brown That weekly cadence makes sense — do you find the newly listed ones or the price-adjusted ones tend to produce better opportunities? And roughly how long does that weekly review take you?
- Real Estate Agent · Kansas City · Member since 2018 · 4k+ posts · 3k+ votes5mo
Quote from @Pal Ram:
@Caleb Brown That weekly cadence makes sense — do you find the newly listed ones or the price-adjusted ones tend to produce better opportunities? And roughly how long does that weekly review take you?
It depends. I would say newly listed is better as many decent fixer uppers get scooped up within the first couple weeks. Maybe 1-2 hours
- 5moAmy LemaistrePro MemberMember since 2023 · 57 posts · 18 votes
@Anees Ur Rahman I've been looking for ai tools that could help with researching properties. Knowing very little about AI, can ChatGPT or Claude be just as useful as n8n or Make?
- Member since 2026 · 4 posts · 1 vote5mo
Quote from @Amy Lemaistre:
@Anees Ur Rahman I've been looking for ai tools that could help with researching properties. Knowing very little about AI, can ChatGPT or Claude be just as useful as n8n or Make?
Hi @Amy Lemaistre That is a fantastic question, and honestly, it's the most common point of confusion when people first start looking into AI for their business.
The short answer is: you actually don't choose between them, you combine them. They do two completely different jobs. Think of it like building a small team.
ChatGPT / Claude = The Brain (Your Analyst)
These tools are incredibly smart at understanding text. If you manually paste a messy property description into Claude and ask, "Does this sound like a motivated seller?", it will give you a brilliant answer. But... you still have to manually sit there and copy/paste 100 listings into it every morning. It doesn't have "hands" to go fetch the data.n8n / Make = The Pipes (Your Assistant)
These tools aren't "smart" on their own, but they do all the heavy lifting. They are the automation engines that can automatically pull the newest 500 listings from a database at 6:00 AM, hand them one-by-one over to ChatGPT to be analyzed, and then drop the top 5 best matches into a neat Google Sheet for you.So, you don't use ChatGPT instead of n8n. You use n8n to put ChatGPT on autopilot!
It is much easier to understand when you see it visually. If you want to give me a DM, I'd be happy to share a quick screenshot of what a basic "n8n + ChatGPT" property screening pipeline looks like behind the scenes so you can see exactly how the pieces connect.
- 5moPeter MckernanBusiness MemberResidential Real Estate Agent · Irvine, CA · Member since 2013 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
Things to look for on these:
1. Days on market are a long time 60+ days
2. They have reduced their price a bit
3. They have gone in and out of escrow
These are the ones that you can really work on negotiating down on price. Newer agents have it listed, or agents that have less experience (less sales). This is a small one but can get you to get that agent to negotiate with the seller to a lower price and get a deal as well.
The McKernan Group4.957 Reviews - 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Danny Joseph That is really useful — especially the counterintuitive point about fresh expired being flooded and harder to work. The 2-3 week aging window makes a lot of sense psychologically. Does that same logic apply to active listings that haven't expired yet, or is the dynamic different when the property is still technically on market?
- 5moNicholas L.Pro MemberFlipper/Rehabber · Pittsburgh · Member since 2018 · 6k+ posts · 5k+ votes
@Pal Ram are you a real person, and is this a real question?
you're using AI to write the posts...
in my experience most flippers don't buy on market at all.
so what are you trying to get at? i'm genuinely asking.
sincerely,
-not AI
- Lender · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2026 · 46 posts · 17 votes5moTheir time may be better spent looking at wholesaler's leads. MLS is usually priced at market value whether the home warrants it or not. Wholesalers usually have a little room and a good wholesaler price properties as investments in the first place.
Quote from @Pal Ram:
I've been talking to a handful of Bay Area flippers lately and keep hearing the same thing — they're checking MLS every morning, but the actual process of deciding which listings to pursue first is mostly gut feel.
Most have some version of a mental filter:
- Days on market feels long
- Price has been cut a couple times
- Remarks mention "as-is" or "seller motivated"
But it's manual, inconsistent, and on busy days good listings get missed entirely.
Curious how others are handling this:
- Do you have a structured way to prioritize which MLS listings you pursue, or is it mostly experience and instinct?
- What signals tell you a seller is actually motivated vs. just a listing that's been sitting?
- How long does your morning lead review actually take?
Genuinely curious how experienced flippers handle this today — especially whether the morning review feels like a real bottleneck or something you've mostly figured out.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Nicholas L. To answer your question, I am a human, a software engineer with 15+ years of experience living in CA. I am here to learn about the sources the flippers use and what signals they look for to identify a good deal.
For more context, I had an offline conversation with one of the investors who in fact, said that they use MLS to look for better deals though they rely heavily on off-market. Some of the replies here do confirm that statement. So basically, I am trying to get my understanding validated.
I really appreciate everyone's thoughts here, and it's been helping me a lot being a newbie.
That being said, I use AI to polish my questions and thoughts, as I wanted to keep them well structured and articulated, given this is a professional forum. This time I didn't polish to prove that I am a human:)
- Property Manager · Warsaw · Member since 2026 · 107 posts · 37 votes5mo
Great questions — and a really common pain point among flippers I talk to.
1. Structured priority vs. gut feel
Most experienced flippers eventually build some version of an informal scoring system — even if they never formalize it. Typical variables:
- DOM relative to the zip code average — not in absolute numbers
- Number of price cuts and their size (one big drop vs. several small ones sends different signals)
- List price vs. estimated ARV ratio
- Property type and title history (probate, divorce, REO — simultaneously red flags and green flags)
The problem is that this scoring lives in their head — and when there are 47 new listings, something important inevitably slips through.
2. Real signals of seller motivation
Beyond "as-is" and "seller motivated" in the remarks — those are almost clichés at this point — more reliable signals include:
- Multiple cuts in a short window (e.g. 3 times in 30 days) — the seller is panicking
- Vacant properties — carrying costs hurt, pressure is real
- Phone photos, no staging — the agent or seller isn't investing in marketing
- Long time since last sale — a 20+ year owner often prioritizes speed over max price
- Public records — tax liens, probate filings, active lawsuits
3. How long does the morning review actually take?
Honestly? If someone says "15 minutes" — they either have very narrow criteria or aren't looking carefully enough. Realistically for an active market like Bay Area:
- 45–90 minutes daily is normal for someone doing real analysis
- The slowest part isn't browsing — it's contextualizing: why has this been sitting, what's the neighborhood doing, is this a situation where I can call today
That's a genuine bottleneck — and it's asymmetric: you miss a good listing once and you never know you missed it, so the pain isn't immediately felt.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Kamil Lysik Great points, especially the "invisible losses" piece. Do the flippers actually calculate ARV for each and every listing that they see in the morning, or is it just a quick estimation? And what about the "phone photos/no staging" signal? Can it be identified by looking at MLS thumbnails or do we need to open every listing individually?
- Property Manager · Warsaw · Member since 2026 · 107 posts · 37 votes5mo
@Pal Ram
Good question on both. On ARV — no, not for every listing. Most flippers do a quick gut-check first (price per sqft, comp familiarity, neighborhood) and only run a real ARV on the ones that survive that 30-second filter. Maybe 5–10% of what they browse.On phone photos — thumbnail quality is usually enough to flag it. Blown-out lighting, vertical shots, no wide-angle lens, furniture in frame that's clearly lived-in. You don't need to open every listing; the cover photo alone often tells the story. MLS grids actually make this faster than people think.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Kamil Lysik one last question. Of everything you have pointed out, what's the single thing that would save the most time if it were automated?
- Property Manager · Warsaw · Member since 2026 · 107 posts · 37 votes5mo
Quote from @Pal Ram:
@Kamil Lysik one last question. Of everything you have pointed out, what's the single thing that would save the most time if it were automated?
Honestly? The contextualization step — specifically, automatically flagging listings where multiple motivation signals stack together: price cuts + days on market + vacant + phone photos. Any single signal is weak. Three or four together? That's worth a call today.
Right now that pattern-matching happens in someone's head, after manually checking 4 different places. If that were automated and surfaced as a ranked shortlist every morning, you'd cut review time in half and stop missing the ones that slip through on busy days.
- 5moPal RamUSA · Member since 2026 · 11 posts · 8 votesOP
@Kamil Lysik So single signals are weak, stacked signals are valuable. Really appreciate the detailed perspective here.
- Property Manager · Warsaw · Member since 2026 · 107 posts · 37 votes5mo
Quote from @Pal Ram:
@Kamil Lysik So single signals are weak, stacked signals are valuable. Really appreciate the detailed perspective here.
Thanks
- Contractor · NYC/Los Angeles · Member since 2019 · 91 posts · 54 votes5mo
I would screen MLS listings in layers so you do not waste time underwriting every bad deal. First filter is location, price band, days on market, property type, and whether the likely exit has enough buyer demand. If the neighborhood or exit price does not work, the rehab math probably will not save it.
Second filter is spread. Look at conservative sold comps, not hopeful active listings, then back into your maximum allowable offer after rehab, transaction costs, financing, holding costs, selling costs, and target profit. If there is no room before you even inspect, move on.
Third filter is rehab risk. I would prioritize properties where the scope is visible and controllable: cosmetic updates, dated finishes, simple layout improvements, neglected landscaping. I would be more cautious with foundation, roof, sewer, major electrical, mold, fire damage, unpermitted additions, or anything where the repair number can move fast.
Fourth filter is seller motivation. Long DOM, failed prior listing, estate, vacancy, price cuts, or poor presentation may create opportunity, but only if the numbers support it.
The goal is not to call on the most listings. It is to call on the listings where price, scope, and exit can realistically line up.
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