Property Lion price drop tool

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Hi, I am currently offline for the next month or so but I've logged in specifically to bring your attention to a brand new property tool, a bit like property bee but different.

I was fed up with Propertybee not working/slowly dying so got a couple of contacts to come up with an alternative.

What we've come up is

           Property Lion  ( so called as we want to catch the lion b****rds putting up dodgy listings on RM )

Property lion will let you BULK capture RM data for a given area/time span in a short time , without the need to browser their pages

It's currently a Linux only tool but there are plans to make a windows version.

So, for example If I run the tool using

    property_lion -r 10 -d 1 1783

That gives me all the reductions, increases and honest mistakes with a 10 mile radius, for the last 1 day for postcode NN1 ( the 1783 is the RM code for NN1, and has to be grabbed from their  web site)

Running this command gives me this sort of output:

*** #PropertyLion 2.33% #PriceDrop ***

Address: Rounding Mews, Upton, #Northampton
Status: Reduced today
InitialPrice: £214995
Price: £214995 to £209995, Down 2.33%
Timestamp: 04-04-2018 11:13:44

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53345202.html

 

*** #PropertyLion 3.98% #PriceDrop ***

Address: Rickyard Walk, Grange Park, #Northampton
Status: Reduced today
InitialPrice: £249950
Price: £249950 to £240000, Down 3.98%
Timestamp: 04-04-2018 11:13:49

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-71161433.html

 

etc.

 

So if you run it once a day you'd see all the listing for NN1 +10 miles for the previous 24 hours in one go.

The info is saved into a simple database.

You can then view the changes via the URL, look at the database files or log the output for future reference.

 

If you set up the linux command line tweet "t" then you can automatically tweet the output e.g.

    property_lion -r 10 -d 1 -t 1783

and if you use the -f option a firefox browser will pop up after each difference is detected so you can have a look, when you kill the browser the check continues.

.e.g

    property_lion -r 10 -d 1  -t -f 1783

 

It's not as user friendly as PB but it allows us to monitor a given area for price drops and has allowed us to capture every property currently up for sale!!!

This is very powerful !!!

We've also set up a twitter feed

      https://twitter.com/UkPropertyLion

which is now up and running and is now, as I type, listing  EVERY drop in price, on a 2/3 day cycle, as they are detected.

e.g.

 

 

So, we now have, in theory, a database with every property listed up for sale ( non-SSTC ) and we are able to calculate the current average asking price, average I make it around approx £300K for properties under 1M which should allow us to make a CURRENT ASKING PRICE RM INDEX ( one of the goals of the project )

If you want to trial this tool then drop me a PM.  I'm looking for technically minded folk that can help us move it forward.

You'll need a Linux based system ( your email/hostname will be logged automatically  so the trolls best not apply, nothing in life is free, this is the cost of entry into the club ) and some technical knowledge.

 

I had the thought that some users could set up a PropertyLionLondon  or PropertyLionLiverpool account and just monitor these areas.

 

Otherwise, sit back and watch the property lion twitter feed.

When the bubble collapses we should see some interesting posts!!!

See you in a month or two.

Bonne journée

 

 

[CanAffordWontPay]

I would be interested but don't currently have linux installed. I could dual boot or run a virtual version so if you're don't get the uptake let me know.

Out of interest how will it track something like the below? Also can it be set to scrape a large area and return the biggest price drops?

[CanAffordWontPay]

1 minute ago, CanAffordWontPay said:

Out of interest how will it track something like the below?

Oops, forgot to mention that the above listing is being advertised with four estate agents concurrently

[VancouverGuy]

Neat tool ... thanks!

[stuckinlimbo]

This is a great idea! Ill drop you a PM

[Roman Roady]

I use linux....is this run in the cmd line or firefox?

 

[jimmyblueeyes]

Good work, not sure how accurate the Propcision tool is but would be good to have something like it rolled out nationwide.

The Map feeature and relisted info is excellent. 

http://propcision.com/investortools/salesrack/index.php?fp

 

[TheCountOfNowhere]

19 hours ago, CanAffordWontPay said:

I would be interested but don't currently have linux installed. I could dual boot or run a virtual version so if you're don't get the uptake let me know.

Out of interest how will it track something like the below? Also can it be set to scrape a large area and return the biggest price drops?

A couple of people have contacted me to ask to test the tool, big thanks to them.

A virtual machine would work, as long as it has the right stuff installed by default.

The data base could be present on a  website anyway which way.  The data will be made available if anyone wants to take that on, that's beyond the scope of this project tho.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

14 hours ago, VancouverGuy said:

Neat tool ... thanks!

Thanks.  The @UkPropertyLion feed is now picking up 100's of drops, so it seems to be working and it's beyond what I'd hoped for.  Top marks to the boffins.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

13 hours ago, Roman Roady said:

I use linux....is this run in the cmd line or firefox?

 

Command line.

Should be a no brainer to run.

 

please PM if you want to try/test

[TheCountOfNowhere]

7 minutes ago, jimmyblueeyes said:

Good work, not sure how accurate the Propcision tool is but would be good to have something like it rolled out nationwide.

The Map feeature and relisted info is excellent. 

http://propcision.com/investortools/salesrack/index.php?fp

 

The collected data could be used to present the data on a website, it's not on my radar at the moment but I dont see any reason for it not to be possible.

Property lion is harvesting the data, if someone wants to use it then let me know.

 

 

[TheCountOfNowhere]

PS. The current asking price for properties under £1M in the UK came out at approx £315K.

This was done using a simple total prices/total number of properties.

If someone has a proper methodology then I'd be interested in hearing it.

As I said, I'm off line at the mo so I wont be able to answer any more queries on the forum.

Thanks for the support.

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

I run a bunch of automated linux stuff at home, PM me if you want help/need resources.

This tool is exactly what I've wanted for ages. I have a tool that mails me when the output of a command changes, so I can stop regularly visiting RM with this....

[Cosmic Apple]

20 hours ago, CanAffordWontPay said:

I would be interested but don't currently have linux installed. I could dual boot or run a virtual version so if you're don't get the uptake let me know.

Out of interest how will it track something like the below? Also can it be set to scrape a large area and return the biggest price drops?

Sounds like an excuse for an old Pi resurrection

[Henrik]

I'm doing a course in data analytics at the moment - and I'd be interested in the data set / database to see if I could perhaps create a final year project out of it.

I'm a little bit confused about one aspect, though... Does the command line tool feed back into a central database, and if so, is there an API to query? If not, that would be a neat feature to add.

[frankvw]

11 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

Command line.

Should be a no brainer to run.

 

please PM if you want to try/test

Hi,

I'll PM you, I'm in. Pretty busy at the moment and for the next month at least but when you are back online, we can discuss a bit more.

If you want to GUI it and cross compile it for linux/mac/win/iOS/Android/Browsers, and get it onto datacenters for enterprise data mining, I can help you out with that. Is it open source? Or have you though about kickstarting, if you want to make some cash for it? Sure alot of folk on here would fund a kickstarter for this kind of thing. It would be beautiful to take on the bull***** indices with a serious opensource tool.

[crooksook]

This sounds good. But - how are you getting hold of the data? If you're regularly scraping from RM, presumably they may notice and block you at some point? It seems like the smart thing about property bee/equiv plugin on chrome is that the prices are collected in a distributed manner that makes it much harder for RM to block.

Interested in testing this - I'm a linux dev.

[Sithuk]

When will the latest property lion index numbers be released?