How to Pull a Reliable Comp Set in 7 Minutes (Without an MLS Subscription)

Most off-market deals die at the comp stage. Not because the property is bad, but because the wholesaler can’t defend a number to the buyer. Here’s the process we use to pull a reliable comp set in about seven minutes, without paying for MLS access.

The 7-minute workflow

1. Pull last 90 days of sold comps in a half-mile radius. Zillow, Redfin, and county recorder are all acceptable. PropStream and BatchLeads are faster if you already have a subscription.
2. Filter to within ±20% of subject square footage and ±10 years of age.
3. Eliminate outliers. Anything 30%+ above or below the cluster is usually a flip or a fire-sale. Note them, don’t include them in the median.
4. Adjust for condition. This is the step most wholesalers skip. Renovated comps are not your subject’s comps unless your scope brings the subject to the same finish level.
5. Adjust for layout. A 3/2 ranch and a 3/2 split-level at the same square footage do not comp 1:1.
6. Compute median, not average. One $700k flip drags an average; the median ignores it.
7. Stress-test ARV at 95% of median. If the deal doesn’t work at 95%, walk.

Tools we actually use

• Free / cheap: Zillow + Redfin + county recorder. Slow but defensible.
• Paid: PropStream is the workhorse. BatchLeads is faster for skip-trace.
• Sponsor: AIWholesail runs this whole workflow in one tab — useful when you’re sourcing at volume.

Common mistakes

• Comping to active listings. Active means “asking” — not “sold.”
• Ignoring days-on-market. A comp that took 120 days to sell at a list-price haircut is not the same data point as a 5-day cash close.
• Trusting Zestimates. They miss condition and layout, badly. Use them as a sanity check, never as ARV.

If your comp set is defensible to a sophisticated cash buyer, your deal will close. If it isn’t, no amount of marketing will save it.