All work / AI engineering · personal tool

Philly Property Scout.

A WAT-framework investment research agent that scrapes every active duplex and triplex in Graduate Hospital, West Philly, and South Philly every Sunday — filters fixer-uppers, scores each property on cap rate, cash-on-cash, and house-hack savings, and surfaces the top picks ranked 0–100. Built for a $40k down payment, NACA path, three-year timeline.

Type
Personal AI tool · WAT framework
Role
Architect + sole builder
Stack
Python · HomeHarvest · pandas · Claude agent
Status
Running weekly, 20+ properties scored
Mockup 01 — Scored property dashboard · top pick: 3836 Cambridge St (score 96.8 / 100)

The problem

Looking to buy a multi-family property in Philadelphia on a $40,000 down payment — but the Philly market moves fast, listing quality varies wildly, and manually running cap rate / house-hack math on every duplex would take hours.

Three financing paths needed to be modeled simultaneously for every listing: NACA (0% down, owner-occupancy, 6.5%), FHA (3.5% down, available now, 7.25%), and a conventional investment loan (20% down, 7.5%). A property that looks expensive at list price might save $2,000/month on housing via house-hacking.

The agent needed to surface the signal, not the noise — filtering fixer-uppers, sketchy zips, and impossible numbers before they ever reached the spreadsheet.

Mockup 02 — Agent terminal output · Sunday scrape & score run (27 quality listings, top 5 shown)

WAT architecture

The system follows the WAT framework — Workflows define what to do, the Agent decides when and how, Tools execute deterministically. This keeps AI reasoning focused on orchestration while Python handles the math.

Separating probabilistic reasoning from deterministic execution means the scoring model is testable, auditable, and stays accurate no matter how many steps chain together.

Mockup 03 — WAT framework pipeline · 4 deterministic tools, 1 AI orchestrator, 1 markdown SOP

Scoring model

Every property is scored 0–100 on five weighted factors, then ranked. The weights are calibrated to a house-hack-first strategy — cash-on-cash return and cap rate are the primary drivers, but house-hack savings matter more than raw price-per-sqft.

Score composition (0–100)
30%
Cash-on-Cash Return
25%
Cap Rate
20%
House-Hack Savings
15%
5-Yr Wealth Build
10%
Price / Sq Ft
3836 Cambridge St · $199,900 triplex · three financing scenarios
NACA · Best path
0% Down NACA
Owner-occupy · 6.5% rate · $40k as reserves
Down payment$0
Loan amount$199,900
P&I / month$1,263
Rental income+$2,850
Net cost / mo−$794
vs. paying rentsaves $2,594/mo
5-yr wealth$211,779
Feasible now — apply when NACA-eligible
FHA · Today
3.5% Down FHA
Available immediately · 7.25% rate
Down payment$20,000
Loan amount$179,900
P&I / month$1,228
Rental income+$2,850
Net cost / mo−$831
vs. paying rentsaves $2,631/mo
FHA feasible?YES
Feasible with $20k down (half of available)
Investment
20% Down · Pure Rental
Remote landlord path · 7.5% rate · PM included
Down payment$39,980
Loan amount$159,920
P&I / month$1,119
Cash flow / mo+$1,960
Cash-on-cash58.84%
PM fee (9%)included
INV feasible?YES
Feasible · leave country with PM in place
Mockup 04 — Financing scenario comparison · 3836 Cambridge St · all 3 scenarios viable on $40k

What it found

First live scan processed 145 raw listings and surfaced 20 investment-grade properties after filtering. The top result — a $199,900 triplex in West Philly — scored a near-perfect 96.8/100 with a 22.26% cap rate and three viable financing paths all within the $40k budget. All three scenarios were feasible simultaneously, which almost never happens at this price point in a major city.

Properties scanned
145
Raw listings, 4 neighborhoods
After filtering
20
Investment-grade, no fixer-uppers
Top score
96.8
$199,900 triplex · 22.26% cap
Best house-hack
$2,631
Monthly savings vs. paying rent

The real tool

The interactive HTML report generated by export_report.py runs locally in the browser. Sidebar shows all 20 scored properties sorted best → worst. Clicking any property loads the full investment breakdown on the right. Below is the live output from the April 17, 2026 scan.

System screenshot — actual property_report.html output · 60 listings scored · real Philly market data Apr 2026
Key design decisions
7-step filter chain
34 fixer-upper keywords, 6 vetted zip codes, per-zip price floors. Cuts 145 raw listings to ~20 investment-grade picks before a single calculation runs.
145 raw → 20 quality
Three scenarios, one pass
NACA (0% / 6.5%), FHA (3.5% / 7.25%), and investment (20% / 7.5%) are modeled simultaneously. The scorer flags feasibility and house-hack savings for each in a single run.
NACA saves $2,594/mo on top pick
Weekly Sunday cadence
Philly duplexes go under contract within days in spring. The agent runs every Sunday at 6am — surfacing new listings in their first active week, before buyer competition thins deal flow.
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