How we decode every property.
No black box. Every estimate, MLS row, photo, and AI sentence on PropertiesGPS is built from named public sources, transparent weighting, and assumptions you can audit.
Data Sources
Every signal traces back to one of these primary sources. We cache aggressively for speed but never invent data.
| Source | What we use | Refresh |
|---|---|---|
| Lee County Property Appraiser | Parcel fabric, ownership, just/assessed/taxable values, sales history. | Weekly bulk + on-demand parcel lookups. |
| Lee Clerk Official Records | Lis pendens, tax-deed filings, code liens, satisfactions. | Nightly. |
| Lee Clerk foreclosure auction calendar | Scheduled foreclosure sales by county and date. | Daily. |
| Lee County tax collector | Tax-delinquent parcel list, certificate status, amounts owed. | Weekly. |
| FEMA NFHL | Flood zone designations per parcel polygon. | Quarterly (FEMA cadence). |
| Licensed MLS / RentCast feed | Active listings, status changes, days-on-market, rental comps. | ~15 minutes during market hours (per-address cache up to 24h). |
| Licensed property data provider | AVM, sales trend, ownership profile, building permits. | On access + monthly bulk refresh. |
| Google Street View + Lee County GIS | Street-level photos, aerial imagery, tax-map images for the property gallery. | On access. |
| NOAA Storm Events Database | Hurricane, wind, and flood event history by ZIP. | Monthly. |
Personas & Ranking
Pick a persona — Buyer, Long-term rental investor, Flipper, STR / Airbnb investor, Wholesaler, or Just exploring — and the marketplace re-ranks every list to your primary KPI. The property detail page also reorders panels so the numbers you use most are on top.
- Buyer: ranks by affordability tier and MAO gap.
- LTR: ranks by cash-on-cash and DSCR with a vacancy/bad-debt floor.
- Flipper: ranks by distress + equity + ARV-minus-rehab MAO.
- STR: ranks by projected STR revenue with a 0.4–0.85× penalty when Rules & Restrictions block STR.
- Wholesaler: ranks by distress score, equity, and absentee tenure.
- Explorer: balanced default.
Rules & Restrictions
Three traffic-light signals on every property page — the regulatory landmines that quietly kill Lee County deals.
- HOA / Condo restrictions: matched against a curated table of known Lee County subdivisions and condo communities (Tarpon Point, Sandoval, Heritage Cove, etc.). Unknown communities fall back to fee-based heuristics and are flagged amber for verification.
- City STR registration: a city-by-city ordinance table covering Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, Estero, Lehigh Acres, and unincorporated Lee — including registration requirement, minimum-stay zones, and annual cap status.
- FEMA 50% rebuild rule: combines the parcel's FEMA NFHL zone (A / AE / V / VE / X) with LeePA just-value to estimate substantial-improvement risk. If a typical renovation budget exceeds 50% of structure value in an SFHA zone, we flag the elevation-compliance risk red.
Limitations: ordinance datasets are manually maintained and refreshed quarterly; HOA matching is community-level, not unit-level, so condo-by-condo bylaws can differ. Confirm with the city clerk and the HOA management company before you commit.
Live MLS Feed
The Active tab on /opportunities streams live MLS listings via our licensed RentCast feed. We surface list price, days-on-market, status (Active / Pending / Contingent / Sold), MLS number, and the listing brokerage when available. MLS rows render in the same unified card as our off-market and distress inventory, so you can underwrite an on-market deal and an off-market parcel side-by-side without learning two UIs.
Updates flow in roughly every 15 minutes during market hours; per-address responses are cached for up to 24 hours to keep pages fast.
Property Photos
Off-market parcels don't have MLS photos, so we build a gallery from public imagery:
- Google Street View as the primary curb-level photo.
- Lee County GIS aerial for a top-down view of the parcel and outbuildings.
- Lee County tax-map images to confirm parcel boundaries and easements.
- Open in Google Maps button for a one-click quick-verify against the live map.
Every gallery has a fullscreen lightbox with pinch-zoom, +/- zoom buttons, keyboard navigation, swipe, and thumbnail strip — so you can inspect the roof, the yard, or the elevation without leaving the page.
Investment Score (0–100)
A weighted blend of five investor-grade inputs. Treat it like a credit score: a ranking signal that helps you compare deals, not a replacement for your own underwriting.
| Input | Weight | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Cash flow projection | 30% | Net rental yield after PITI, HOA, flood, insurance, vacancy. |
| Downside risk | 25% | Flood zone, special assessments, insurance availability, code liens. |
| Appreciation trajectory | 20% | Block-level price velocity over 1y / 3y / 5y windows. |
| Distress / motivation signal | 15% | Lis pendens, tax-deed filings, absentee tenure, equity %. |
| Financing flexibility | 10% | Free-and-clear status, owner-occupied vs out-of-state, tenure. |
MAO & Insurability Stress Test
Every property detail page exposes a Max Allowable Offer (MAO) ceiling and an insurability stress table. For Buyer personas, MAO is income- and DTI-driven and already subtracts the property's recurring carry (taxes, insurance, flood, HOA, utilities). For Flippers, MAO becomes ARV × 70% minus rehab. The stress test stacks preset adverse scenarios — roof age band slips one tier, flood premium up 30%, wind credits expire, carrier non-renewal — and shows the dollar impact on true monthly cost, affordability tier, and MAO.
STR Revenue Model
Short-term-rental potential is modeled from RentCast nightly comps within a 1-mile radius, occupancy assumptions tuned per submarket, and local STR rules (e.g. Cape Coral allows weekly rentals county-wide; Sanibel restricts STR in most residential zones). We surface monthly gross, not net, so you can apply your own cleaning / management split.
Seller-Financing Signals
An owner is flagged as likely to consider creative financing when they meet two or more of: free-and-clear (no open mortgage in records), 10+ years of tenure, out-of-state mailing address, no homestead exemption, and equity above 60%. We don't claim the owner will say yes — we narrow the list of doors worth knocking on.
AI Features
We use AI to make the underlying public-records data faster to read — not to invent facts. Every AI feature operates over data we already display elsewhere and links back to the parcel.
- AI Property Search: Natural-language search across the catalog ("3/2 in Cape Coral under $400k with no flood zone").
- AI Property Brief: Per-property narrative summary on every detail page, citing the same hidden-cost, distress, AVM, and Rules & Restrictions data shown in the panels. The model is explicitly forbidden from recommending STR income when HOA or city rules block short-term rentals, and surfaces the 50% rebuild rule whenever it applies.
- AI Financing Scenarios: Model conventional, FHA, VA, and seller-financed payments on the fly with your own down payment, rate, and term.
AI output is model-assisted and should be sanity-checked against the underlying numbers before you transact.
Refresh Cadence
Distress records: nightly. Foreclosure auction calendar: daily. Tax-delinquent list: weekly. MLS prices and status: every ~15 minutes during market hours. Parcel fabric: weekly. AVM + ownership: on access (cached 30 days). FEMA flood zones: quarterly. NOAA storm history: monthly.
Limitations
We don't predict off-market sale prices, individual carrier underwriting decisions, hurricane outcomes, or seller psychology. Estimates are estimates — confirm with a local agent, inspector, and insurance broker before you transact. Coverage is currently Lee County, FL only; other markets are visible but not yet fully scored.
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