Property research across 50+ county websites

2026-10-29 · Avi Agola, The Seattle Compute Company

One of our customers is a land-acquisition startup. Finding land to buy starts with parcel details: who owns it, how big it is, what the county says about it. There is no single source. Each county runs its own website, and each one has its own search form, its own quirks and often its own account system.

What the agent actually did

1. 1.
   Scans county websites for land details

   The agent works through 50+ county websites, searching each for the land details the team asked about.

2. 2.
   Creates its own accounts

   When a site wants an account first, the agent signs up on its own, using its own email address.

3. 3.
   Handles the inbound email

   It reads the verification emails and other messages the sites send back, and acts on them so the research can continue.

Why its own email matters

County sites that ask you to register will email you a link to verify the address, and sometimes follow up later. If a person did this across 50 counties, their inbox would fill with mail from sites they will never visit again.

Each Smith agent has its own email address. The agent signs up with that address, reads the verification email when it arrives, clicks the link, and carries on. The mail lands in the agent's inbox, not in anyone's personal one, and the accounts it creates belong to the agent. If you want to know what it signed up for, the log says.

This is the agent-owned identity case: the account is interchangeable, nobody's reputation is attached to it, and you want to know who did what. For the other case, where the account is the asset, see delegated vs agent-owned identity.

Why computer use

Most county sites have no API. The agent drives a real browser inside its own isolated computer, reading pages and filling forms the way a person would. That is what lets one agent cover 50+ different websites without a custom integration for each. What is a computer use agent explains how that works.

What makes a task like this a fit

County research has the traits that suit an agent with its own identity:

• Many sources, no common format. Each site has its own layout, so a custom integration per site doesn't pay off.
• Accounts everywhere. Each site wants its own login, and each login comes with email.
• Repetition. The same questions get asked of each site, so what the agent works out on one helps on the next.
• A need to know what happened. With dozens of accounts on dozens of sites, a record of what the agent signed up for and what it found is worth having.

If your work looks like that, whether it's land, permits, licenses or filings, AI agents for small teams explains how to hire an agent and set its role.