All Forum Posts by: Nettles Mason

Most people buy the information from a 3rd party. If you do not want to get the data yourself and use your software knowledge a couple of companies offer API access to call the data you are looking for

@Andrew Briggs

The site is down for maintenance.  

http://access.tarrantcounty.com/en/tax.html

The Property Tax payment application will be unavailable Sunday, May 5, 2019 from 12 a.m. CST through 6 a.m. CST. (1) Read More

Im pulling all the data for Harris County but planned on Fort Worth or Dallas in the near future

@Andrew Briggs Most people that are looking for phone/email are using paid data. There are tons of companies offering data append and skip trace services.

@Shawn C. I sent you a DM

I have noticed county sites updating and making it more difficult to pull data. Each time the destination site changes something with security or layout the script used to scrape that site data has to be fixed. Sometimes its a simple fix and other times it is a complete rebuild. 

Could be one reason they are raising prices. I've paid developers 3x as much to pull the same data from 2 different sites based on difficulty. (using captcha breakers, captcha cost, proxies/vpn)

Can you explain "quality or accuracy"?  Did you compare their list data to the court records or did the people you contact say they were not in pre foreclosure?  

I agree, most sites change. We focus on 2 programs per county site. First one extracts all data and hosts, the second updates a few hundred records a day. Varies by county but only updating all SFR isnt bad. Updating all parcels takes a while. If site changes you still have all the data hosted and can rebuild/update script without being down.

By hosting data you can create relationships with property owners in other counties and get a better picture of motivations

Just an idea ;)

Interesting ideas. I'm a wantabe data nerd and developer. I had to hire developers. 

Attom data seems like the best API to get data for my need. If you buy more than 1 million records at a time via FTP they will reduce the price down to under a penny. Their MLS access is $3k per state or county (can't remember...I quit listening at 3k)

Attom Data's API calls are like .08 per call delivering hundreds of data points I didn't need. 

I went the scraping route on the county level. It has many challenges due to the fact no two counties are the same. This gives me the ability to also collect court records as other posters have mentioned. 

I guess it really depends on what data you are after. Mine was building dynamic evergreen data sets that are used to create lists.

or the latest real estate buzz word list stacking?

I found datazapp pretty cheap to buy emails. I can't remember they are like .03 a hit and have something like a $50 min order

If you have coding knowledge you can automate it.  Using Podio or other free CRMs can host the API calls. Otherwise what you are doing is the best free method.

Use the free Zillow API to identify the last sale date (if the house was sold recently or foreclosed on by bank) 

Getting a building value helps eliminate land and mobile homes  (unless you are looking for lots) 

Melisa Data API or other similar services like Attom Data can provide home owner's name for $0.03- .05/per record. 

Parse out Companies/LLC's - most skip trace companies do not provide phone numbers for companies

You still need to find cell phone numbers but you are on your way to becoming a list scrubbing ninja 

@Stephen Blalock How did the Bridge API application go? I looked at them a couple years back for information but never got a response.

I couldn't find consistent data API or tools that could combine information to get a solid foothold. Scraping is tedious but works.  Big data in relational databases are difficult to keep more than a couple million records straight with random data format and availability from "freelance counties" makes them difficult to standardize.

Is anyone using graph databases?