I’m a real estate investor that wants to leverage AI in my investing.

Specifically, I want to build a tool that searches for active listings in my market and automatically sends me the best deals every day.

That all sounds nice, right? But there’s just one problem.

I need data.

And it turns out that getting real estate data, particularly for on-market listings, is not an easy task. Especially if you want nationwide coverage and you don’t have a real estate license or direct access to an MLS.

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it’s impossible.

So in this article, I’m going to walk you through my process. I started with dozens of different data sources, APIs, and real estate platforms.

I then narrowed that list down to one single tool — one real estate API that I think is best suited for my application — and that is finding on-market deals as an individual real estate investor.

And no, this article is not sponsored. In fact, this is the first article on my channel, and as of posting this, I have 0 subscribers and nobody knows who I am.
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And yet, you still found me. So congrats … and maybe subscribe?

Let’s dive in.

GOODBYE ZILLOW

Like most people, I started with what I already knew: Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com. These sites clearly have the data I need—I mean you can see the properties right there.

But there’s one major problem. You can’t use them legally to power your own tools.

Scraping these websites is against their terms of service. It can get you banned, sued, or both. And even if you get away with it, it’s incredibly fragile. They can change their backend structure, update their protection layers, or just block you at any time.

It’s like building a house with a foundation made of loose sand next to a cliff.

I don’t want to put in the effort to build something based on such short-term thinking.

So even though those platforms are familiar and tempting to use, I had to remove them from consideration.

THE MLS PROBLEM

So next, I dug a bit deeper into the world of real estate data sources. This is where things got both exciting and discouraging.

On-market listings in the U.S. are controlled by hundreds of local MLSs, or Multiple Listing Services. These organizations are effectively a data silo. And they’re protective of their data too. Each MLS has its own rules, fees, and politics.

Yes, there’s technically a direct way to access MLS data through APIs, but I found that unless you’re a licensed real estate agent, a broker, or a certified software vendor with formal agreements in place, it’s very difficult and often cost prohibitive to do so.

And for a smaller real estate investor like me, it just wasn't going to work.

Unfortunately, this dropped several data sources from the funnel. Many of which felt like they were made for large-scale enterprise users, not for solo investors just trying to build a new tool.

I simply don’t have the bandwidth or budget to negotiate access with individual MLSs.
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So I guess it’s onto the next step in the funnel.

I PREFER IT EASY

At this point, I started evaluating the remaining data sources based on potential ease-of-use.

Ideally, I want to work with a tool that’s designed with individual investors in mind, and that’s transparent upfront about their pricing and API documentation.

And that knocked out a surprising number of companies.

Personally, I felt like many of the tools lacked transparency about their pricing, API documentation, or even just confirmation that the tool is made available to individual investors.

It’s possible that these data sources may work for me one day, but at this time, I'm looking for something a bit more accessible and beginner-friendly to be honest.

So with this last ease-of-use filter in mind, the bottom of the funnel came down to two serious contenders: HouseCanary and Rentcast.

HouseCanary is a legitimate option, but it still feels a bit more enterprise-oriented. For example, when I attempted to book a demo call with my personal gmail address, their website wouldn't accept it, it had to be a corporate email.

While on the other hand, I felt like Rentcast really nailed their marketing of being investor-friendly and they stood out to me for their transparency.

They clearly shared their pricing and API documentation upfront on their website. In fact, I was even able to test a few of their APIs, all within just minutes of signing up, all completely for free.

Now to be clear, Rentcast is not all perfect.

For example, it’s a data source that’s not directly from the MLS. It’s instead based on third-party derived information, so it’s not quite as “official” as data directly sourced from the MLS.

But at the time of this video, they still claim to have roughly 96% nationwide coverage for residential sales and rental properties as well.

And that includes a lot of different types of properties. They have single-family homes, condos, townhomes, manufactured housing, small multifamily, and even vacant land.

The only major category I didn't see is non-residential commercial, like office buildings, industrial spaces, retail, etc.

But that doesn't bother me, I’m not a commercial real estate investor.

So it’s decided. For my first version of building an on-market AI-enabled deal-finding app, I’m going to move forward using Rentcast data.

WHAT COMES NEXT

So let’s recap.

I started with dozens of options for real estate data.

But I first eliminated consumer websites like Zillow and Redfin because scraping them is a major legal liability and not likely to work out long term.

I also eliminated MLS-dependent platforms that required too much red tape, licensing, and bureaucracy.

And lastly, I filtered down the remaining data sources based on their potential ease-of-use.

And that led me to Rentcast.

So my next step is to dive further into their API documentation, figure out how to query their data effectively, and start building my app.

So if you’re interested in following along or simply just learning more about how AI can improve your life as a real estate investor, then I encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter.

It’s brand new and you have an opportunity to be one of my very first subscribers. How often do you get that chance?

Well, thanks for watching and see you in the next article.

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In best regards,
Ben

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Best Real Estate Data APIs for Building a Deal Finder App

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