Stop doing price-per-m math by hand on property alert emails

Description and use

The script automatically extracts price and area from property alert emails, calculates price per square meter, and ranks listings, eliminating manual calculations.

Problem

Manual calculation of price per square meter from property alert emails is tedious, error‑prone, and often hides good listings.

Outcome

The script automates price‑per‑m² calculation, reduces manual effort, and surfaces good deals that might otherwise be missed.

Workflow

• 1. Collect property alert emails (plain text, HTML, or .eml).
• 2. Run the script: python3 scripts/triage.py alerts/*.eml --ref City=ref_price --max-price 400000.
• 3. The script parses each email, extracts price and surface, guesses the city, and calculates price per m².
• 4. It compares the ratio to the reference price and outputs a ranking (GEM, watch, pass) with optional flags for suspiciously low prices.
• 5. Review the output (text, JSON, or CSV) to identify promising listings.

Evidence

It reads plain text, HTML or .eml exports, finds an amount followed by €/EUR and a number followed by m²/m2, guesses the city (Lyon 69003, 33000 Bordeaux, à Lille), and computes the price per m².

Source

You provide your own reference price per m² for each city, and it ranks listings as GEM, watch or pass.

Source

Honest limits: extraction is heuristic, so check the first run against the original email.

Source