The Open API is now… Open!
By: Brian Ma, Program Manager | October 26, 2006
After weeks of sweat, blood and perhaps even a few tears, the team here at Zillow is excited to announce that our Open API is now open for business! Check it out here or by clicking the “API Network” link on the site footer.
Zillow’s Open API allows any Web site to recreate a lot of Zillow’s functionality on their own site - for free. Or another way to think about it: Zillow is like a fast food restaurant handing Web developers a tray of (free)food to choose from, but instead of burgers, fries, and soft drinks, we’re offering Zestimates, Zindicies, charts, sales data, and more! You get to choose what you want to put up on your site, how it looks, when it gets displayed, etc. All you have to do is sign up.
Check out some of these other sites that have already integrated the Zillow API since we announced a pre-launch version last July:
- Technology & Media Companies: Yahoo! Real Estate, Auction Cloud, and IDX Central
- Real Estate Brokerages: Redfin, Prudential California/Nevada, ZipRealty and Century 21 Joe Walker & Associates
- Savvy Developers who have created cool stuff: Google Gadget, Desktop Zestimates and NetWorth
All you techies out there are probably bored by now. “I know what an API is. Just let me go play with it!” Ok, ok, here you go. And if you ever get lost, you can find the technical docs here, as well as a forum just for you savvy developers to share ideas, technical questions, etc. Enjoy and let us know what you think.
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Real Estate, Zestimate, Zillow, Zillow API
Comments
9 Comments so far
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Opie on November 6, 2006 5:16 pm
I love Zillow. Is there any way to tell in advance when the value range data (and corresponding zestimates) is going to be updated each week/month?
David G from Zillow.com on November 7, 2006 9:48 am
Opie -
THANKS!
Our current goal is to publish fresh Zestimates every Wednesday or Thursday. This process currently competes for resources and attention with initiatives to grow our database so some weeks we have to skip the Zestimate update. Right now, an update every 2 weeks is predictable, and by new year I’d expect that it’s predictably happening weekly. Sometime next year we should move to publishing Zestimates daily.
Opie on November 7, 2006 10:26 am
Thanks for the response, David.
Here’s a development suggestion for you. Next to the “30 day change” section (which appears to have been changed from ‘1 week change’ - which is a good thing), put the start and end date in light grey so that people know exactly what 30 day period you are referring to.
Thanks for the ear.
David G from Zillow.com on November 8, 2006 6:27 pm
Opie -
I’m glad you noticed the 30-day change
Good suggestion, although I know we’re very short of (virtual) real estate on the home’s details page. I’ll run this by our designers though. Did you notice the updated date next to the value range? Maybe that could be closer to the 30-day change.
Ray C on November 10, 2006 12:49 pm
The Zillow API forum has been unreachable for the last week. Any idea when it will be back up?
Jason Reynolds on November 11, 2006 6:56 pm
API forum still unavailable. What’s the scoop?
Drew M on November 13, 2006 12:12 pm
Ray & Jason- I apologize for the API forum outage- there was an unexpected server outage that our host experienced. The site is now back online. Please let me know if there is anything specific that I can help you with (you can reach me at drewm at zillow dot com)
Rich Johnson on November 16, 2006 7:14 am
I really like zillow.com. I have been a fan since it went online. Now that you are offering the API, I am really excited. I have been waiting for a step by step instruction for none programmers with regards to implementation. I have tried the forum but I am still lost. I know that I have a great domain name along with appraisalpage.com and I would like to lauch them both to offer property values.
Drew M from Zillow on November 16, 2006 9:54 am
Rich-
I apologize for your difficulty you are having with our API. We are certainly working on ways to make the API easier to implement (we do realize there are non-programmers that would like to use our API). Please post as much information and feedback as possible in the forum for us to review. If you have an idea of exactly what type of functionality you’d like to put on your web site- it would help us determine the best way to attempt to help you out. Thanks for the feedback.