Optimizing Search Projects

Optimizing your search project(s) is the process of tweaking them in a way such that you'll end up with the most optimum set of deals. The process is achieved by simply making a few adjustments to the filters in your search project.

The suggestions in this article help address a quirk with property listing sites that you probably didn't even know exists.

Benefits of Optimizing Your Search Projects

There are 3 main reasons why you want to follow the suggestions in this article:

1. You'll end up with more deals you can act on.
2. You'll end up with better deals you can act on.
3. You'll avoid wasting "cap-space" on properties that are of no interest to you. I'll explain this "cap-space" next...

The "Quirk" You Want To Avoid

This quirk generally applies to the most popular property listing sites - especially the ones that have tens of thousands of properties listed for sale. This especially applies to larger cities where there are many more properties for sale versus a small town or rural community.

When you search for properties on a property listing site such as zillow for example, if the site tells you that there are 10,000 properties for sale in that area, that doesn't mean they're about to present you with all 10,000 properties - even if you have the patience to go through all of them page-by-page! They may give you the impression that they will; however, if you dig deeper and do some basic math, you'll find they often "cap out" at a few hundred or so.

So what's the big deal?

The problem is you could end up missing out on some deals simply because you got "capped out".

One way or the other, you're going to get capped out. But we can address this issue and "fill in the cracks" by taking a few easy steps to optimize our search projects to increase the chance that the good deals arrive in our BirdDogBot account.

Getting "capped out" is NOT something that BirdDogBot does to your search projects! BirdDogBot is at the mercy of the property listing sites and can only report back what they're willing to give.

Search Project Optimization Tips

The following is a list of suggestions you can easily apply to your search projects such that you get all the benefits outlined above. They are presented in order of importance and come as a result of countless hours of testing carried out by our development team.

To optimize your search projects, do the following::

1. MOST IMPORTANT! Use "tight" Price Ranges and avoid using broad price ranges whenever possible. As an example, avoid searching for price ranges like $0 - $1,000,000 when you really have no interest in $30,000 properties and/or don't have the means to acquire a $700,000 property. You should only search in prices ranges that are suitable for your situation. By avoiding large price ranges, you'll still get capped out at some point, but at least you'll have avoided having properties outside your "sweet-spot price range" that do nothing but waste your cap-space. Typically, I would recommend the difference between your minimum and maximum price should be roughly $250,000.
2. The same applies to your Bedrooms and Bathrooms filters. As an example, avoid using "0+" or "1+" if you really only want 3+ bedrooms. In this example, your cap-space will get wasted by studios (0 bedrooms), 1 bedroom and 2 bedroom homes.
3. On the "Filters" tab, turn OFF any Listing Status and Property Types that do not interest you. Again, it's all about maximizing that cap-space!

TIP #1: If you have multiple search projects, you can apply all these changes to all your search projects at once. Please refer to the "Updating Multiple Search Projects At Once" article for details.

TIP #2: If you insist that your search criteria needs to be that broad (for example $0 - $1,000,000), then you would be better off splitting your search projects up. In other words, have one search project searching from $0 - $250,000, then another from $250,000 - $500,000 and so on.

If you have any questions or require further assistance, please contact [e-mail].