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Finding the perfect house using open data

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Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#11

Post by atourgates »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
cjoh wrote: post #2

The biggest users of the open data movement are, in fact, real estate professionals. It's companies like Trulia and Estately and Zillow and what not that are actually taking open data from government and putting it to good use. It'd be interesting to see some kind of startup come out of this. Though it's fairly hands-on, real estate is still a fairly hands on market, and with real estate lobbying being what it is, it…

Don't forget http://www.redfin.com ; their presentation of properties with the associated public data is beautiful. No association, just a huge fan.

Redfin really is a great real-estate app.

A few years ago, I shopped for a home in an area that Redfin serviced. The data they had and the way the presented it made it easy to find the house we wanted, and figure out what we would be comfortable paying for it.

A few weeks ago we closed on a house in a non-Redfin serviced area. The shopping experience was night and day. Here, none of the local MLS databases, or Zillow or Truila, list things like past purchase prices, and even generally hide past listing prices. I'm not sure if that has to do with local regulations here (ID) vs. the last place we tried to buy a house (CA), or if it's something specific to Redfin.

Either way, buying a house in a non-Redfin service area involved quite a few extra trips to the local courthouse, and made me really appreciate the data it offers.

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

atourgates wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget http://www.redfin.com ; their presentation of properties with the associated public data is beautiful. No association, just a huge fan.

Redfin really is a great real-estate app. A few years ago, I shopped for a home in an area that Redfin serviced. The data they had and the way the presented it made it easy to find the house we wanted, and figure out what we would be comfortable paying for it. A few weeks ago we closed on a house in a non-Redfin serviced area. The shopping experience was night and day. Here, none of the local MLS databases, or Zillow…

> The shopping experience was night and day. Here, none of the local MLS databases, or Zillow or Truila, list things like past purchase prices, and even generally hide past listing prices. I'm not sure if that has to do with local regulations here (ID) vs. the last place we tried to buy a house (CA), or if it's something specific to Redfin.

Yes, this is typically because of realtor and MLS database regulations.

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#13

Post by akgerber »

The "moneyball" move is buying land right before the mass transit extension is completed and the neighborhood develops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAX_Orange_Line

But this is a really fun article on how to use open-source GIS tools to do something practical, which is something I've wanted to delve into for a while— I'll try it later tonight, thanks!

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#14

Post by jweir »

akgerber wrote: post #13

The "moneyball" move is buying land right before the mass transit extension is completed and the neighborhood develops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAX_Orange_Line But this is a really fun article on how to use open-source GIS tools to do something practical, which is something I've wanted to delve into for a while— I'll try it later tonight, thanks!

Yeah, Governor Christie's brother likes that strategy.

"Governor Christie's brother invested in real estate near new PATH station in Harrison"

http://www.northjersey.com/news/governor-christie-s-brother-...

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#15

Post by vlandham »

mrfusion wrote: post #8

Where do you get the house listing data? Do you then geo code the addresses and filter them against your acceptable locations? (Sorry if I missed reading that part)

Started a similar repo for Seattle, WA data here: https://github.com/vlandham/seattle-atlas

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#16

Post by aembleton »

Wow; this is great to see. I have recently done something similar in the Greater Manchester, UK area. I've been looking for a house and wrote some code to scrape rightmove.co.uk and zoopla.com to get the house data. Checked their locations against data from http://data.police.uk/. Checked time to walk to the nearest metro or railway station and time to cycle to work. Metro and Railway station locations were scraped from wikipedia and time to travel was taken from Google Maps.

From all this, as well as £s per m^2 of floor space I ordered by the least compromise.

Currently trying to clean it all up and turn it into a webapp to make it useful for anyone else who wants to find property in an area.

I'm about to complete on the purchase of my first house and am really looking forward to it. It's not perfect; but I know for the price, I can't get much better.

If I finish the webapp; I might try and include data such as walking distance to the nearest pub from CAMRAs Good Beer Guide and maybe something similar for restaurants.

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#17

Post by Hovertruck »

cjoh wrote: post #2

The biggest users of the open data movement are, in fact, real estate professionals. It's companies like Trulia and Estately and Zillow and what not that are actually taking open data from government and putting it to good use. It'd be interesting to see some kind of startup come out of this. Though it's fairly hands-on, real estate is still a fairly hands on market, and with real estate lobbying being what it is, it…

I know it's anecdotal, but most realtors I have met actively dislike Trulia/Zillow/etc

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#18

Post by mrfusion »

Caged wrote: post #10
mrfusion wrote: post #8

Where do you get the house listing data? Do you then geo code the addresses and filter them against your acceptable locations? (Sorry if I missed reading that part)

Are you referring to real estate listings? In my case, I use Trulia to search the zones after I narrow down the locations. However, if you're referring to the building footprints I have a Make target that pulls GIS data from public sources: https://github.com/caged/portland-atlas

I guess I'm asking how you find only listings in the zones you want?

Does trulia have an API?

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#19

Post by Jemaclus »

I work in online real estate, and this is exactly the kind of thing we love to do when it comes to utilizing data. How can we take X, Y and Z data points and generate something useful? Taking into account crime reports, graffiti reports, available parking spaces, etc, can all help you decide whether this place is good or not. The requirements here are kinda strange (proximity to a grocery store? not crime rates or anything like that?), but to each his own, I suppose. I'm really impressed with the resourcefulness of the author, though. I think I would probably just go to Zillow or Trulia and see what they say...

Re: Finding the perfect house using open data

#20

Post by pdx »

Jemaclus wrote: post #19

I work in online real estate, and this is exactly the kind of thing we love to do when it comes to utilizing data. How can we take X, Y and Z data points and generate something useful? Taking into account crime reports, graffiti reports, available parking spaces, etc, can all help you decide whether this place is good or not. The requirements here are kinda strange (proximity to a grocery store? not crime rates or an…

> (proximity to a grocery store? not crime rates or anything > like that?), but to each his own,

Some people are not able to, or do not wish to drive every time they want something to eat. Proximity to a grocery store sounds like a good metric. It's the european model of shopping every day for that days meal, vs the U.S. model of stocking up at Costco.

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