Build guide

I Automated Real Estate Deal Hunting with Claude

Watch Realtor.com for new listings, have Claude underwrite every alert overnight, wake up to analyzed deals.

ClaudeGmail
Apr 27, 2026
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What you'll build

An automation that watches Realtor.com for new listings matching your criteria, then has Claude analyze every alert overnight - cash flow, NOI, cap rate, rent base case, operating expenses, property highlights - and drop one aggregated analysis into your email drafts every morning at 7:00 AM. You read it in 2 minutes.

I built this because the manual version was costing me deals. Each property my realtor friend sent took ~10 minutes to research by hand. Last time he sent three: by the time I got to them, one was already pending, the second - the best of the three - had an offer deadline that passed a day before I even looked at it, and the third didn't pencil. 30 minutes of research, all three wasted.

What you'll need

Step 1: Set up saved searches on Realtor.com

Go to Realtor.com → Manage searches and create a saved search for each area you're hunting. Each one is just criteria: the zip code or address area, the property type (mine were condominiums), and the price range. I run six of them.

Once a search is on, Realtor.com emails you within the hour whenever a new listing hits the market. That's the trigger for everything else - but on its own it's just email alerts, not an automation.

Step 2: Pick the right Claude tool

Claude gives you two ways to run things on a schedule, and they're basically the same thing with one difference that decides it:

This job is "watch my inbox while I sleep," so Co-work Scheduled Tasks is the pick.

Step 3: Connect Gmail

In the Claude desktop app, go to the Co-work section → Customize → Connectors. Connect Gmail (I have Gmail and Google Drive hooked up). These connectors are natively integrated by Anthropic, so it's a couple of clicks - no API keys.

Step 4: Create the scheduled task

In Co-work, create a scheduled task - mine is called New Britain rental scanner. The instructions tell it to:

  1. Every morning at 7:00 AM, go through all the Realtor.com listing alerts that came in the day before
  2. For each listing, pull the data and research the property online
  3. Run the math - monthly cash flow, NOI, cap rate, a base case for rent, operating expenses
  4. Weigh the pros and cons against my requirements
  5. Aggregate everything into one email and save it as a draft

I deliberately don't give it access to send emails. It drafts; I send with one click. Keep that boundary.

Step 5: Read the morning draft

That's the whole flow: Realtor.com saved searches → email alerts → Claude Co-work at 7:00 AM → one drafted analysis email → you.

Real example: a listing alert came in at 10:29 PM with nothing but a price ($399,000), six bed, three bath, and the address. By morning I had a full draft in my inbox - cap rate, monthly cash flow, a link straight to the property page, a rent base case, operating expenses, and the property highlights: fully tenant occupied, tenants pay their own heat, hot water, and electricity, new water heater and furnace installed in the past few years. Those are exactly the details that decide whether a rental is viable - and exactly the kind of thing I'd have missed doing it by hand. Honestly, the analysis is better than mine.

The real lesson isn't real estate. It's spotting the manual tasks you do daily and turning them into small scheduled tasks like this one. Good luck and happy building.

Resources

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