Zillow’s Open API

It’s rare that Zillow parts the curtain and shines a light on our product roadmap, but today at the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco, Rich and Lloyd are sharing the news that Zillow has begun to develop an Open API to share data on nearly 67 million homes in America.

We figured there may be questions, so here are a few answers on what this means:

What is an open API?
In business terms, Zillow’s open API will allow a third party Web site to recreate a lot of Zillow’s functionality on their domain. In technical terms, API stands for Application Programming Interface and allows two computer systems to talk with each other in a common language.

What will be in Zillow’s open API?
Our initial specs have us distributing the majority of information that can be found on Zillow.com including Zestimates, Zindex info, charts, comparable sales (including sales date and price), beds/baths and other data.

Why are we doing this?
We believe that real estate is all about the long tail. We estimate there are more than a million individual agent and brokerage Web sites in the U.S., and although a handful of large national sites get the majority of the attention, it’s clear that buyers and sellers engage with real estate professionals on a local level. And it’s also clear that many individual agents may be looking to enhance their own sites with relevant and sticky content.

Although we’d like to work with each of these sites individually, the reality is that an open API is more scalable and allows individual sites to service themselves and easily offer their users Zillow functionality on their own domain.

For examples of some sites already using this functionality, check out Yahoo! Real Estate (or see our recent blog post), and Real Estate Promoter, a company that builds Web sites for real estate agents (see their integration within a test site).

When will the Open API launch?
We are working to have this ready in early fall.

What can I do today?
In this early stage we want to hear from sites who are interested in integrating with our Open API. Please fill out this form or send an email to BD@zillow.com visit the API Network to learn more. and include an outline of how you plan to use Zillow functionality on your Web site and we may include you prior to the launch. Unfortunately we won’t be able to work with everyone yet, but at the very least you will be first to know when the Open API launches.

Update 9/05/08: Take a look at all the local data available for your own web sites — including free data relating to schools, local amenities, demographics, home values, and real estate.