All,

I am a real estate investor and a programmer and I have a new website that I am hoping will be useful to Realtors and brokers. Its called: http://legwerk.com and its designed to search all properties in multiple areas by criteria vs. just the properties listed on the MLS.

For example: if I, as an investor, wanted to search for all SFH's with brick exterior, and the owner lives out of state, 3 beds, 2 baths and the assessed value is under 100K then how would I do that? My Realtors are limited to the MLS but I want to find all of the properties in my city that match that criteria so that I can have my realtor contact the owner and see if they are interested in selling.

So, to solve this I designed a new system that gathered all of the property data in my surrounding cities so now I can search for properties that meet my criteria and my realtor can send the property owners letters or can call them seeing if they are interested in selling.

Buying properties in this way ensures that I have no competition and can make a pretty good deal if the owner is looking to sell.

Is this something that you as Realtors and Brokers would be interested in? If you could give your investors an advantage would that translate into more sales for you?

I am desperately looking for feedback, thanks a bunch.
Tim - VA
http://legwerk.com

We have a lot of information in our MLS, including a link to the tax assessors website with all owner information.
However, for investors it just might be the ticket, who also want information from outside their local area.
p.s. no public government website here would have useful info. such as the type of exterior siding.

My MLS connects to the Realist system, which already--as part of my MLS fees--allows me to search for pretty much the same information as what you're proposing. I've never played around with property information outside my local area, so I'm not sure how similar their property data is for other areas. For areas already covered by established systems like that, though, I can imagine you would face an uphill battle getting subscribers.

Thank you all for the feedback. I can say as an investor I have bought over 15 properties using this method and made a lot of money in the process so I know that this is useful info but I think it will be an uphill battle to get people to sign up because it's outside the norm of how most people search for properties to purchase. Plus, an investor can use this type of system and bypass a realtor all together.

That's why if I offer this to Realtors and Brokers as another tool then that would make sure that the Realtor stays in the loop even more.

If I can find a way to easily demonstrate the power of this kind of approach then I should be able to build up a pretty good user base. At least I hope that I can.

Thanks again,
Tim - VA

I think you need to apply information to a system that is local in nature. With so many different databases for tax assessors and MLS's nationwide, I don't see you being able to provide very accurate data, just look at Zillow or similar vendors.

Now that's a good point but I have that worked out and can refresh my data at anytime giving me the most up to date info possible. The real trick is getting all of the property data in the US, that's the real challenge but even if I make it for the most populated areas and don't cover some of the smaller areas I think that this could still be a viable business model as long as I have investors or realtors that want this kind of data.

Thanks for the feedback.

Again, you're going up against existing service providers that already give me that same information. When my MLS provides me access to the same searchable data for free, what is going to persuade me to pay to use your system?

infect its a nice service to search properties