Real Estate APIs and Data Science

[Sebastian Garcia]

Hello everyone!

Quick bit about me- I'm a data scientist working in NYC and literally just started looking into REI a week ago. Mostly because of the dream I have of retiring early with a nice cash flow, but also partly because of the undoubtedly cool stuff I can do with the data.

I'm aware there are probably a good amount of tools/sites already available for determining hot markets in the area, where to invest in hopes of appreciation, predicting house value, etc. But it would be a dope project to build some machine learning model tuned to exactly what I want, like interactions between price and crime and population movement and income shifts and their impact on cash flow, not just property value. And so on and so forth.

I'm going with the Zillow API for now but it seems there's a pretty low rate limit. But it's a good start.

If anyone can point me to less-known real estate open databases/APIs that supply additional information, as well as any smaller data sources you find valuable, please let me know! I'd love to share any findings here.

And if anyone's looked into or done this kind of stuff- data science for real estate- I'm very curious about your experiences and I'd love to hear about them!

Thanks!

[Gavin D.]

in anycase, Sebatian, Ive been a full time dev for over 10 years now, and there is one thing I can promise you about data...  If it was "INTENDED" to be available to you, ... Its worthless.. for numerous reasons, 1. its likely tampered with.. Zillow is a great example, dont believe me, look at a house in public mode, than switch to owner mode...2.  the companies who have useful , relevant, and profitable data do 1 of 2 things with it... use it within their own business model, or sell it for a premium.   So where do you get good data?  If its properties and realestate you are into... learn to scrape the county Auditor for 'EVERY' property... then, add some additional depth by scraping the county clerk's site for deeds, now, bounce that data down again against GIS and geolocation to get a good grasp of not only population density, but amenities , nightlife, dining etc...  And lastly (well not lastly... just lastly for now)  phone append and email append the names and addresses to get methods of contact...If you really want to get crazy from that point, compare length of phone line ownership, and age of deed on the property to EPA minor environmental disaster maps and you can sort out who is old and probably has caner, pretty quickly.  Want the best data that anyone on this site has ever seen... scrub all of the previous against obituary listing to look for surviving spouses...