SpotProperty thinks it can find you a good real estate deal

Can a computer algorithm find you a steal of a real estate deal?

That's the idea of SpotProperty, an online service that's expanding today from a few metro areas to dozens, including the Baltimore region.

Founder Henry Shao, who also started real estate brokerage Movoto, said he wanted to reproduce automatically what it can take buyers a lot of time and effort to do by hand -- cull all the listings in a price range down to the ones that are actually good deals.

"Clients have to look through many properties, do their own spreadsheets," he said. "People want to find something that's of good value. Nobody helps you do that -- Zillow, they show you 100 different houses and you have to look through all of them."

Shao said SpotProperty surveyed real estate agents to learn more about how they use recent sales and other data to judge whether an asking price is a deal, then turned "that thought process" into an algorithm to do it en masse. The company piloted its service in Miami, Charlotte and Boston, emailing "daily deals" to users who signed up.

"Deals we send [are] about 15 to 20 percent below the market rate," he said.

Right now, a human screens out homes in lousy shape, Shao said. But he plans to account for differences in condition automatically down the road.

I wondered if SpotProperty's revenue model could influence which homes it offers up as good deals. But Shao said the site isn't sponsored by agents and the algorithm doesn't care who's listing the properties.

Instead, SpotProperty suggests agents to users. If the buyers end up purchasing a home with a recommended agent, the agent gives a portion of his or her commission back to the site.

If you try it out, let me know how it goes.

What's your personal strategy for deal-hunting?

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