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26

Neighborhood Data Via the Zillow API

By: Drew Meyers, Community Relations Specialist | December 26, 2007 |

Over the past few months, we’ve added two API calls to the Zillow API Network, providing developers a way to pull city and neighborhood information onto their own sites. Why did we do this? We believe strongly that consumers should be able to research information about homes and neighborhoods easily and for free in order to make smarter real estate decisions. We also know that real estate is inherently local. These new API calls allows us to get information about local areas in front of a broader audience; at the same time it provides sticky and compelling content for other Web sites. The new calls are:

  • GetDemographics - While this API call is named “GetDemographics” — and includes city and neighborhood demographic census infromation, including data such as the percentage of population that are males/females, median household income, the total number of households in the region, and average number of homes with kids — the vast majority of the data we added to our recently updated city and neighborhood pages is also available — such as the Zindex, Zestimate distribution, year built distribution, and home type. The API returns both charts & numeric values, so it’s up to you how to display the information on your site. For example, if you had a website targeting buyers/sellers/owners in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, the API would be a great way to add quality data & charts about the neighborhood that your clients and prospective clients are interested in.

  • GetRegionChildren - Developers can query a city, such as Seattle, and receive a list of all the neighborhoods within the city along with the latitude and longitude of the center point for each neighborhood.

We’re excited to see what kind of crazy mash-ups can be created with the data provided in these new APIs. Heatmaps using all sorts of data — both from Zillow and other sources — seem like the most likely mash-up, along with perhaps neighborhood comparison tools looking at the Zindex or type of home across various areas. I am sure there are many other possibilities that I haven’t even thought of.

We’ll continue to add useful information to our Zillow API so that all the developers out there have lots to work with (leave a comment if you’re looking for something specific).

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Comments

10 Comments so far

  1. BlinkGeo » Happy Holiday Link Karma 12-27-2007 on December 27, 2007 8:06 am

    […] Zillow provides two new API calls that provide demographic information for cities and neighborhoods. From their blog: “These new API calls allows us to get information about local areas in front of a broader audience; at the same time it provides sticky and compelling content for other Web sites.” […]

  2. Anelka on January 16, 2008 8:41 am

    Quick question? How up to date is your demographic information for cities and neighborhoods? Do you use Census data from 2006?

  3. Drew Meyers on January 16, 2008 9:34 am

    We use data from the 2000 census (they only update the actual census data every 10 years).

  4. Thomas Cristello on January 16, 2008 2:30 pm

    When I look up my home on zillow, it reports that the value in the last 30 days has decreased 7.9% yet the value in my zip code has increased 1.4% for the same period. How do you explain this?

  5. 7000+ Neighborhood Boundary Files in Shapefile Format - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 16, 2008 6:00 pm

    […] Thomas Cristello: When I look up my home on zillow, it reports that the value… […]

  6. A Mashup with Zillow Neighborhood Shapefiles and the Zillow API - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 21, 2008 2:24 pm

    […] (a developer at Diverse Solutions) has created a mashup using both the boundary files and the GetDemographics API call. The mashup has a pretty slick interface that displays neighborhoods in California on a map, along […]

  7. Brian Baxter on January 22, 2008 10:20 am

    I noticed in another post that your boundary definitions are partially based on census geography, while some boundaries are user-defined.

    If this is the case, how are you able to create an accurate correspondence with census variables for boundaries that are user-defined?

  8. Drew Meyers on January 22, 2008 10:57 am

    Brian-
    We have every home tagged with both a neighborhood and a zip code. We then back zip code census data into neighborhoods using the average census stats for all homes in that neighborhood.

  9. Bill Rose on January 22, 2008 1:00 pm

    Please post metadata for these neighborhood features. This should at least include your sources in those cases where Zillow and/or Zillow subscribers are not the content originators.

  10. Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow API | Zillow® Blog on February 25, 2008 1:57 pm

    […] interest. Keeping that in mind, the fact that Zillow has released neighborhood boundaries and has real estate, home, and demographic data at the neighborhood and city level freely accessible via the…, here are a few […]

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