How to track changes to housing inventory data on county sites

For real estate investors, developers, and market analysts, local government portals are the ultimate source of truth. Whether you are looking for foreclosure listings, new building permits, or zoning updates, the data usually hits the county website first. However, trying to track changes to housing inventory data on county sites is rarely a smooth process.

Most municipal websites rely on outdated architecture. They rarely offer APIs, webhooks, or notification systems. This forces professionals to manually refresh pages or download updated CSV files daily just to see if a single number has changed. This manual approach is prone to human error and, frankly, is a waste of valuable time.

Fortunately, you can automate this entire workflow using modern change detection tools. By setting up monity.ai, you can turn a static government webpage into a dynamic data feed that alerts you the moment new inventory hits the system.

Why county data is difficult to monitor

If you have spent any time navigating county assessor or clerk websites, you know the struggle. The data is often buried behind search forms, disorganized tables, or convoluted navigation menus. Standard scraping tools often fail because they cannot handle the specific user interactions required to reveal the data.

To successfully track changes to housing inventory data on county sites, a tool needs to handle three specific challenges:

• No direct URL: Sometimes the data only appears after you accept a disclaimer or click a "Search" button.
• False positives: Government sites often have dynamic headers or timestamps that change on every reload, triggering useless alerts.
• Complex formatting: You usually do not want to know if the entire page changed - you only want to know if a specific row in a table was added or modified.

Setting up your monitor with monity.ai

You can bypass these technical hurdles by using monity.ai to act as your automated research assistant. It can navigate the site, extract the relevant data, and interpret what happened. Here is how to set it up.

1. Configure browser actions

Since many county databases require interaction before showing inventory data, you can use the browser actions feature. Before the monitoring check runs, you can instruct monity.ai to perform tasks such as:

• Clicking "Accept" on terms of service pop-ups.
• Selecting "Residential" from a dropdown menu.
• Clicking the "Search" button to generate the latest inventory list.

This ensures the monitor is looking at the actual data table, not just the search portal.

2. Select the monitoring area

Once the data is visible, you do not need to monitor the whole page. You can select the specific HTML element or visual area that contains the inventory count or the list of properties. By isolating the table, you prevent false alarms caused by sidebar ads or footer updates.

3. Use AI to filter the noise

This is where standard uptime monitors fall short. Instead of just getting an alert that says "Change detected," you can use the AI prompt feature in monity.ai to filter for what actually matters to your business logic.

For example, you could add a prompt such as:

"Only notify me if the number of available single-family homes in the inventory table increases, or if a new foreclosure status appears."

The system will analyze the text changes and only send a notification if your specific criteria are met. The notification will include a short AI summary, such as "New inventory added: 3 properties listed in District 4," sent directly to your email, Slack, or Discord.

Extracting data for analysis

Beyond simple alerts, you might want to extract specific details to feed into your own spreadsheets or models. You can ask monity.ai to extract data fields - like the address, parcel number, and listed price - whenever a change occurs. This turns a messy HTML table into structured insights you can actually use.

Start automating your market research

relying on manual checks means you are always reacting slower than the market. By automating the way you track changes to housing inventory data on county sites, you get a significant competitive advantage. You get the data first, without the headache of refreshing tabs every morning.

You can start monitoring these data sources today with a free account. There is no credit card required to get started. Try monity.ai for free and stop manually checking county websites forever.