Expired & Delisted Listing Leads — Off-Market Detector

Detects homes that left the market without selling — the signal behind every $60–360/month "expired listing" subscription — as a pay-per-lead API with no MLS lock-in.

Roughly 85,000 US homes get delisted every month (Redfin), and expired/withdrawn listings are the highest-converting seller leads in real estate: the owner already wanted to sell, their agent contract just ran out. That's why 20–50 agents call each one within 48 hours, and why REDX ($60/mo per MLS), Landvoice ($60–120/mo per MLS), Vulcan7 (~$250+/mo) and Espresso Agent ($279/mo) built subscription businesses on this exact signal.

This Actor gives you the same detection layer, unbundled:

• Watch any ZIP codes — no per-MLS subscriptions, no sales call, no contract
• Pay per lead ($100/1k), not per month — a January expiration wave costs you more, a quiet week costs you almost nothing
• API-first — pipe leads into your CRM, dialer, direct-mail tool, n8n/Make workflow, or AI agent
• You own the watch state — snapshots live in your Apify storage, and your watch history compounds into better detection

How it works

The first run for a ZIP records a snapshot of every active listing. Every following run re-checks the market and reports listings that disappeared without a sold record:

type	What it means	Billed?
delisted_lead	On market before, gone now, no recent-sold record	$0.10
relisted	A previously delisted home is back on market — motivated seller	Free
stale_listing	Seed-run bonus: on market 60+ days without selling — a pre-expired seller	Free
zip_summary	Per-ZIP receipt: actives checked, leads found	Free
run_summary	Whole-run receipt — "no leads" is an answer, never an empty table	Free

Why can't the first run return delisted leads? Detecting a disappearance requires a before and an after — and "before" data (what was listed last month) isn't publicly available anywhere; it's the thing MLS feeds and $119+/mo data vendors sell. Your watch builds that history from day one, and so the seed run pays you a different way: every listing already sitting 60+ days on market comes back as a free stale_listing row — those owners are weeks from becoming expired listings, and agents prospect them the same way.

Each lead row carries: full address, city/state/ZIP, last asking price, beds/baths/sqft, days-on-market when it vanished, first/last seen dates, the date it disappeared, last listing status, a stable zpid join key, the listing URL, and a confidence flag (probable = vanished outright; low = was pending, likely a closing in flight).

Run it on a schedule (daily or every 2–3 days is ideal) with Apify's built-in scheduler — set it once and leads accumulate.

Sample output

{
  "type": "delisted_lead",
  "address": "1234 Main Street, Example City, TX 78701",
  "zipcode": "78701",
  "last_list_price": 345000,
  "beds": 3, "baths": 1, "area_sqft": 1452,
  "days_on_zillow_last_seen": 94,
  "first_seen": "2026-07-08",
  "disappeared_on": "2026-07-15",
  "last_status_seen": "ForSale",
  "confidence": "probable",
  "zpid": "100000000",
  "detail_url": "https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/..."
}

What this costs (both layers, honestly)

1. This Actor's events: your first run for each ZIP is free of this Actor's fees — a seed run only records your baseline, so there's nothing to bill. From the second run on: $0.02 per run + $1 per 1,000 listings watched + $0.10 per delisted lead.
2. Data source: each run internally calls the Zillow ZIP-search Actor under your account (~$1.10 per 1,000 listings scanned) — this applies on every run including the seed, since the baseline has to be fetched once. A typical suburban ZIP has 50–300 active listings.

Worked example: watching 5 suburban ZIPs (~800 active listings) daily for a month ≈ $26 of scanning + ~$0.60 of run fees + $0.10 per lead found. The first day (seeding all 5 ZIPs) is free of this Actor's fees. If those ZIPs produce 40 leads that month, your total is around $31 — versus $60–120/month for one MLS region with an incumbent, and you only paid for what appeared. One converted expired listing is a $5,000–15,000 commission.

Who uses this

• Listing agents prospecting expired/withdrawn homeowners (pair with your dialer's compliance tools)
• Real-estate marketing agencies running direct-mail or door-knocking campaigns for agent clients
• Investors hunting motivated sellers before they relist
• Proptech builders and AI agents that need a delisting signal as an API primitive

No contact info — by design

Rows contain addresses and listing facts only: no owner names, no phone numbers, no emails. That keeps this dataset clean of personal data and keeps compliance simple. Need contacts? Chain any skip-trace Actor from the Apify Store on the address field in one step (n8n/Make make this a 3-node workflow) — and scrub against the DNC registry before calling; that's your obligation, not optional.

Input reference & common mistakes

You don't need to get this perfect. Wrong-but-unambiguous values are fixed for you (and noted in the log); a genuinely empty ZIP list ends the run with a receipt that tells you what to change — never a blank failure. And if the upstream data provider has a hiccup, the run ends cleanly with no leads and no charges, your watch state untouched — not a failed run.

Field	Accepts	If you get it wrong
zipCodes (required)	5-digit US ZIPs: a list ["78701","85254"] or a string "78701, 85254". ZIP+4 (78701-1234) is trimmed to 78701	Invalid entries (1234, abcde) are dropped with a warning; no valid ZIPs → receipt telling you the format. Max 50/run
priceMin / priceMax	dollars, 0 = no bound	Out of range clamped; if min > max they're swapped; non-numeric ignored — all logged
includeFsbo	true / false	Any truthy value is accepted
staleDomThreshold	0–3650 days (0 disables the seed-run bonus rows)	Clamped / defaulted to 60, logged
maxLeads	1–10000	Clamped / defaulted to 500, logged
contactEmail	a plain email (reserved for a future direct-fetch mode)	Control characters stripped automatically; never fatal

Quickest correct first run: put one or two ZIPs in zipCodes, leave everything else default. The first run seeds each ZIP (you'll get a baseline + free stale_listing bonus rows); schedule it daily and delisted leads start appearing within 2–7 days.

Honest notes on the data (read this)

• Detection is portal-derived inference, not MLS truth. A probable lead means the listing vanished from the portal with no sold record — usually expired/withdrawn/cancelled, occasionally a data hiccup or an off-MLS sale. The relisted signal and your own follow-up close that gap. Incumbent MLS feeds see status flips a few hours sooner; this Actor sees withdrawn and quietly-delisted homes that MLS-expired-only feeds can miss.
• First run per ZIP produces zero delisted leads — it seeds the baseline (you get free stale-listing rows instead). Delisted leads start when the market moves: schedule daily and typical ZIPs surface leads within 2-7 days.
• Coverage follows the portal. Very rural areas and off-MLS listings may be missed.
• Watch state lives in your account under the delisted-listing-watch key-value store. Delete it to reset a watch.

FAQ

How is this different from REDX/Vulcan7? They sell MLS-sourced expireds plus skip-traced contacts as a per-MLS monthly subscription. This is the raw detection signal, nationwide, pay-per-use, API-first, without contact enrichment.

Can I watch a whole metro? Yes — up to 50 ZIPs per run; run multiple schedules for more.

What happens on a huge day (e.g., early January)? Year-end expirations spike. Cap your spend with maxLeads and the platform's max-charge limit — this Actor honors both and never charges for undelivered leads.