Ugly House Finder vs DealMachine in short
DealMachine is built around driving for dollars: you drive a neighbourhood and its app logs the properties you spot. Ugly House Finder scores visible distress from street-level and aerial imagery, so the same reconnaissance happens without the drive. If you want boots on the ground and a mail workflow, DealMachine. If you want to cover a whole county this afternoon, us.
Side by side
| Ugly House Finder | DealMachine | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $49/mo (Property Scout, 300 points) | $99 per user per month (Basic, 10,000 data credits per user) |
| What the price meters | Points, metered by scan area and skip traces | Per user, metered by data credits |
| Coverage | 72.6 million or more parcels mapped. Visual scoring runs anywhere Street View reaches, and where imagery is thin a property still gets a Census-tract context score plus records-based motivation signals. Owner records and county-scale lead lists cover 1,776 counties across 45 states | 150 million properties and 240 million people |
| Visible physical condition scored from imagery | Yes. Every scanned parcel scored for visible distress | Logs what you observe while driving. No automated imagery-based condition score published |
| Nightly violation, permit and tax-delinquency monitoring | Yes. 33 markets checked nightly | Not published on their pricing page |
| Cost per skip-traced contact | 10 points per property, which is $1.63 on Property Scout, $0.99 on Deal Hunter and $0.75 on Market Dominator | Drawn from per-user data credits rather than a published per-contact rate |
| Lead export cost | Free. Unlimited PDF and CSV downloads on every plan | Included in the per-user credit allowance |
| Free trial | 7 days, 100 points, full feature access | Not published on their pricing page as of July 2026 |
Pricing and features for DealMachine were read from their own public pricing page. Figures are as of July 2026.
What DealMachine does better
- Runs the best driving for dollars mobile app in this category, with real route tracking while you drive.
- Carries 240 million people records alongside 150 million properties, which is deeper contact data than we hold.
- Includes API and CLI access on every plan, where most tools reserve that for enterprise tiers.
- Has a mature postcard workflow at 75 to 89 cents a piece, built into the same tool.
What Ugly House Finder adds
- Scores the visible physical condition of a house from street-level and aerial imagery, so you can rank a list by what the properties actually look like.
- Monitors 33 markets nightly for new code violations, building permits and tax delinquency.
- Charges nothing for lead exports. Download every saved property as PDF or CSV on any plan.
- Starts at $49 a month, which is less than half the entry price of any tool on this page.
Where condition scoring falls short
Visual scoring needs a usable image. In our own Carter County scan, 27 percent of parcels had no street-level imagery at all, and coverage thins out in rural markets. A property without a usable image is not dropped: it still receives a Census-tract context score and any records-based motivation signals we hold, such as tax delinquency, ownership structure or a deceased owner. What it does not get is a visual read on the building itself. That means our measured distress counts are a floor, not a ceiling, and we find imagery coverage is worst in exactly the areas where distress runs highest, so the true number sits somewhat above what we report. Records-based tools do not have this limitation, which is part of why we suggest running both.
How to run both
Use us to decide where to drive. Scan the county, pull the Hot tier, then send DealMachine's app down only those streets to confirm and start the mail sequence. You keep the ground truth and the mail workflow, and you stop burning days driving streets with nothing on them.
Add condition data to the stack you already run, from $49 a month.
What you cannot buy from DealMachine at any price
County-scale scans done for you. Every tool on this page is self-serve search. Tell us the county and we will scan it and hand back a ranked list.
Estate Watch. Weekly deceased-owner alerts matched to parcels in your county. Deceased owner is the strongest motivation signal we track and the window is short, so alerts favour recent deaths. Sold per county with limited availability.
Portfolio Watch. Send us a property list you already track and we watch it for ownership changes, new distress signals and status changes, on a schedule.
Tell us the county and we will quote it.
Common questions about Ugly House Finder and DealMachine
Is Ugly House Finder a DealMachine alternative?
For the finding half, yes. We cover ground far faster because we score imagery instead of asking you to drive. For the mail and dialer half, no. DealMachine has a postcard and outreach workflow we do not offer.
Do I still need to drive for dollars?
Less of it. We think driving is a good way to confirm a shortlist and a poor way to build one, because you can only cover a few streets an hour. Scanning first and driving second is the cheaper order.
Which is cheaper, Ugly House Finder or DealMachine?
Our entry plan is $49 a month. DealMachine Basic is $99 per user per month as of July 2026, so a two-seat DealMachine account is $198 a month. Compare per seat, not per plan, because their pricing scales with users and ours does not.
Does DealMachine score property condition from photos?
DealMachine records what you observe while driving and holds nationwide property and owner data. It does not score the physical condition of a house from imagery on its own. That is the difference between the two tools.