The remarks field is the most honest part of a listing. Photos are staged and prices are aspirational, but when a listing agent writes "sold as-is" or "seller motivated," they are communicating the seller's actual position to every agent reading. The problem is that almost nobody systematically reads remarks across a full market. These are the ten keywords worth detecting, and what each actually signals.
The Keywords and What They Mean
As-is: the seller will not make repairs and expects offers priced accordingly. Investor special: the listing agent has already concluded retail buyers will not want this property. Handyman special and needs TLC: condition issues priced in, the classic value-add profile. Estate sale and probate: heirs selling an inherited property, usually prioritizing speed and certainty over top dollar. Short sale: lender approval required, longer timeline, but pricing below market by definition. Foreclosure and pre-foreclosure: bank involvement or imminent bank involvement. Motivated seller: the broadest signal, but combined with price cuts or high DOM it confirms what the numbers suggest. Cash only: the property will not pass lender requirements, which removes the entire financed buyer pool and leaves investors.
Why Saved Searches Never Catch These
Standard MLS saved searches filter on structured fields: price, beds, baths, area. The remarks are free text, and most MLS front ends offer limited or no keyword alerting on them, especially on the agent remarks visible only to other agents. Reading them at scale requires pulling listings through the MLS's data API and running the text through AI keyword and context detection. That is exactly what the system shown in our distressed property feed demo does: it reads the remarks of every active listing daily, weights the language it finds, and folds it into a distress score alongside price cut history and days on market.
One keyword alone is a hint. A keyword plus three price cuts plus 90 days on market is a seller who will take an investor offer seriously this week.