Neighborhood Data Via the Zillow API

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 information, 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).

Update: Check out all the local data available for your own web sites — including free data relating to schools, local amenities, demographics, and real estate.