Build an n8n rental alert that skips unchanged listings

Description and use

An n8n automation that emails daily only new or changed rental listings, filtering out unchanged data and focusing on rent reductions.

Problem

Daily rental searches often resend the same listings, wasting time and resources. The goal is to send only new or changed listings, especially rent reductions, via email.

Outcome

The automation sends concise daily emails containing only new or price‑changed rental listings, eliminating duplicate notifications and reducing Apify event costs.

Workflow

• 1. Create a monitor ID and configure the Apify Actor with "onlyChanges": true and "firstRunMode": "seedOnly" to capture the baseline snapshot.
• 2. Export the Apify Actor workflow JSON and import it into n8n as "zumper-rental-alerts.json".
• 3. Set up an HTTP Header Auth credential in n8n with the Apify token and an SMTP credential for email delivery.
• 4. Schedule the n8n workflow to run daily at a chosen time.
• 5. The workflow calls the Apify Actor, receives the dataset, and passes it to a formatter node that builds a text digest.
• 6. If the dataset is empty (no new or changed listings), the email node receives no digest and no email is sent.
• 7. Optionally filter for rent reductions by checking rows where change_type is "price_changed" and price_change_amount < 0.
• 8. Monitor run status and handle failures (e.g., HTTP 403) before interpreting results.

Evidence

The request uses 512 MB, a 240-second Actor timeout and a $0.75 maximum run charge.

Source

The formatter accepts both an array response and one n8n item per row. It returns no items when the dataset is empty, so the email node receives no digest on an unchanged run.

Source