Lothound doesn’t score the headline price — it scores landed margin. Every alert is anchored to a 60-day comparable-sales band, netted with the real cost to get the asset into your hands, and fired the moment a lot clears the threshold you set per vertical.
We never score against the asking price alone — that’s the headline lot’s pitch, not its real market value. Instead, Lothound pulls a trailing 60-day window of closed sales that match the lot on asset class, condition, and geography, and uses the 30th percentile of that window as the benchmark band.
Anchoring to a band instead of a single close means a single outlier sale can’t pull the score. And anchoring to the 30th percentile (not the median) gives a more conservative benchmark, which means alerts only fire on lots whose landed cost really sits below recent market.
A Yamaha F250 outboard only counts against other Yamaha F250 (or comparable-HP) outboards — not marine lots as a whole. Subcategory narrowing keeps noisy adjacencies out of the band.
Refurbished, lightly-used, and salvage tiers are kept separate so a parted-out listing never pulls the median of a clean example down with it.
A lot in the Pacific Northwest comps against PNW closes. Cross-region sale prices (especially for freight-heavy assets like marine engines) distort the band otherwise.
Older closes age out of the band. Asset values shift between quarters; a 60-day window keeps the benchmark current without overreacting to a single outlier close.
The headline lot price is what you pay the auction house. The landed cost is what the asset actually costs you. Lothound nets three costs on top of the bid before comparing against the comp band:
GovDeals typically runs ~10%, GovPlanet ~12%, regional auctioneers 5–13%. We average premium per-source, not per-listing, so a single cheap-rate tier doesn’t leak margin into the score.
Freight is modeled from declared lot weight + pickup ZIP to a coarse destination zone. This is a directional estimate, not a freight quote — the goal is to keep a heavy lot’s landed cost honest when scoring.
A marine outboard with 412 hours carries a different refurb exposure than a lab centrifuge. We assign a refurb allowance per vertical + condition tier, and net it into landed cost the same week every lot is evaluated.
This is the same widget that ships inside every Lothound alert — exact same rows, exact same numbers, exact same format.
Subscribers set a per-vertical threshold (for example: 15% below band). Lothound computes landed margin against the 60-day comparable band in Step 02 and fires an email alert only when a lot clears that threshold. Everything below the threshold stays out of your inbox.
You set the threshold once per vertical on the plans page. Lothound runs Step 02’s math against every closing lot in your verticals; the moment a lot clears your threshold with margin to spare, you get the same five-step breakdown shown below — landed cost, comp band, edge percentage, and a buy / watch / pass recommendation — straight to your inbox.
The panel on the right is one anonymized winning surplus lot — asking price, premium, freight, refurb, the comparable band, and the margin edge. The lot detail is redacted; the numbers and the format are not. This is what lands in your inbox when a lot clears your threshold.
Source · [REDACTED] · marine · closing this quarter
See the marine surplus alert feed →See the lab equipment surplus alert feed →See the machine-tool surplus alert feed →See the vehicle surplus alert feed →See the electronics surplus alert feed →band n=184 · last 60 days · matching asset class
Your threshold: 15% under band · This lot cleared by +3.5 pp → alert fired
Set a vertical and a minimum margin threshold — Lothound emails you the same five-step breakdown the next time a lot clears it. Free new-listing alerts available without an account; paid threshold alerts unlock the scored breakdown and saved searches.
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