Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow API
By: Drew Meyers, Zillow Business Development Specialist | February 25, 2008
I’ve posted some of my ideas in the past on what could be created using the Zillow API (here and here), so this is another “idea” post along the same lines. While there are certainly some great WordPress plug-ins for real estate sites, I haven’t seen any that address the desire of local buyers, sellers, and owners to learn more about the neighborhoods and cities in their area of 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 Zillow API, here are a few ideas:
Idea 1 – Many blog readers might not necessarily know the exact city or neighborhood they are interested in, but know that they want to learn more about some new areas. Give the blog reader the option to select a city from a list (or search for a city), and then, if we have neighborhood data for that city, give the reader a drop-down box to select a particular neighborhoods (we currently have data on over 7,000 neighborhoods). You could create an entire page with charts and data about the neighborhood or city – everything that is on our local pages could be pulled into your WordPress blog via the GetDemographics API.
Idea 2 — To accommodate a home buyer who has narrowed their choices to several neighborhoods or cities, and now wants to compare them, you can highlight 2 (or 3 or 4) neighborhoods and display all the data side-by-side so that people can quickly evaluate them. I’ll leave it to the developers to figure out the details regarding what data from the GetDemographics call is best utilized in a comparison plug-in and how it gets displayed.
Idea 3 — Let the blog author select a list of neighborhood and/or cities they want to create “pages” for in WordPress. These pages could then be linked from the sidebar or header of the blog. To give the pages a little more of a personal feel, a neighborhood description or review by the blogger and integrating photos from Flickr would both be great additions to the page.
Idea 4 — I think this idea is pretty self-explanatory — create a neighborhood heatmap application integrated into WordPress by combining Zindex values and Zillow’s neighborhood polygons.
All of this data is 100% free to you as long as you follow Zillow’s branding requirements. If there are some really compelling plug-ins developed with our API, we’ll consider adding them to Zillow Labs (and perhaps sending you some SWAG).
Happy PHP coding!
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zillow API
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Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow API | The Long List of Odysseus Medal Nominees | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments on February 25, 2008 2:48 pm
[...] Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow API, by Drew Meyers. [...]
Comment on Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow … | Medal of Honor on February 25, 2008 9:44 pm
[...] Mark Hauschild wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt[…] Neighborhood WordPress Plug-in Ideas Using the Zillow API, by Drew Meyers. […] [...]
Ernani on February 28, 2008 11:58 am
Nice post. Will try on http://www.foreclosureconnections.com
Layla on March 7, 2008 6:26 am
Great thoughts. I like some of these plugins. I’ll be sure to try out a few and let you know my successes and failures with using them.
Comparing Real Estate Markets with the Zillow API | Zillow® Blog on April 2, 2008 11:51 am
[...] I included this idea as one of my WordPress plug-in ideas, I wanted to give a little bit more of an overview as to how to use the GetDemographics to [...]
CindyM on April 11, 2008 12:54 pm
Interesting post. I will try some of this on my blog. Thanks
Colorado Springs on July 9, 2008 9:24 pm
Great stuff! I will utilize this on my Colorado Springs real estate blog.
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tax liens on July 27, 2008 4:11 am
What is you opinion on the most recent tax lien changes in gov? I feel it opens up a huge opportunity for people looking to make a substantial income. Thanks
Free Mortgage Refinancing Advice on August 5, 2008 9:09 am
Certainly, mortgage refinancing can help you create a better financial picture for yourself. But to get the most out of your refinance, you’ll need to conduct plenty of research to arm yourself with the necessary refinancing information. There are going to be upwards of two million properties lost to foreclosure in the next 18 - 24 months. That horse has already bolted! The short sale process is a responsible answer to help mitigate most of these situations. In the current climate of economic uncertainty the decision to refinance should not be made in haste. The situation helps both the foreclosing bank and the defaulting homeowner. So fasten your belts as we are in for a rocky ride! Anyway I have bookmarked your site with del.icio.us as I plan to drop by again.
Real Estate Resource on August 17, 2008 8:31 pm
This is a great help for finding real estate property in a specific place in a very convenient way. Gonna try this to my real estate site.
-Jan
john on August 21, 2008 8:49 pm
may i know if zillow accept agents from asia to post listings here too?
Homethinking Adds Neighborhoods | GeekEstate Blog on October 14, 2008 2:36 pm
[...] A neighborhood comparison tool is actually something I’ve been thinking about for awhile (idea #1 on my wordpress plugin ideas post from February), so I’m looking forward to seeing the second iteration of this [...]