The Best APIs in Real Estate

Onboard Informatics has long had a developer platform that houses APIs on community data, property data and more. We wanted to take a look at the broader landscape of APIs and see what other sources are out there to help build your next real estate application or solution. Here's our short list of the Top 10 Best APIs in Real Estate.

Onboard Informatics

Well...we had to start here. Onboard Informatics is a leader in data-driven consumer engagement. We have data on every property in the country and the areas around that property. Our clients use that data to engage their consumers and turn that interest into sales. We have APIs on property, points of interest, community and more.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://developer.onboard-apis.com/docs
• API Categories: Property, Area, Community, and Points of Interest
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: HTTP
• Supported Response Formats: JSON, XML

Zillow

The Zillow API Network turns member sites into mini real estate portals by offering fresh and provocative real estate and mortgage content to keep people coming back. There are four categories of APIs. 1) Home Valuation API: Search results list, Zestimate™ home valuations, home valuation charts, comparable houses, and market trend charts. 2) Property Details API: Property-level data, including historical sales price and year, taxes, beds/baths, etc. 3) City and neighborhood market statistics and demographic data 4) Mortgage rates and monthly payment estimates.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://www.programmableweb.com/api/zillow
• API Categories: Home Valuation, Property, Demographics, Mortgage Rates and Payment Estimates
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: Unknown
• Supported Response Formats: XML

Realtors Property Resource

Realtors Property Resource® offers a national database of real estate data covering every parcel of property in the country. The API provides users an interface to the database. It can be used for pre-populating listing input screens, generating comparable properties, generating more in-depth property detail pages and more. It uses SOAP protocol and responses are formatted in XML. Full documentation is not publicly available.

• API Portal / Homepage: http://support.narrpr.com/entries/282292-API-FAQs
• API Categories: Real Estate Data on every Property in the US
• Architectural Style: RPC
• Supported Request Formats: XML, SOAP
• Supported Response Formats: XML, SOAP

Walk Score

Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address based on the distance from a house to nearby amenities. The Walk Score API uses a RESTful interface and returns the Walk Score for any latitude and longitude in the U.S. in XML or JSON format.

• API Portal / Homepage: http://www.walkscore.com/professional/api.php
• API Categories: API on Walkability for any area in the US, Public Transit, and Travel Time
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: URI Query String/CRUD
• Supported Response Formats: JSON, XML

Zoo Property

Zoo Property is a real estate property listing management system for web designers and software developers, giving users the ability to choose who designs and manages their website. The API lets users access an XML data feed for all the properties, office details and team member information for a real estate office. Users can also make RESTful calls to obtain property attributes, property detail attributes, primary and secondary contact attributes, images, brochures and floorplans. Responses are formatted in XML and JSON.

• API Portal / Homepage: http://www.zooproperty.com/api/
• API Categories: All properties, office details and team member information for a real estate office
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: URI Query String/CRUD
• Supported Response Formats: XML / JSON

Yelp Fusion

The Yelp Fusion APIs are RESTful APIs and users can retrieve business review and rating, information for a particular geographic region or location.display review information for a particular business, determine accurate neighborhood name information for a particular location, track recent reviews for a particular business, display pictures of highly rated local businesses and of the top reviewers for that business, determine a particular business' review and rating information based on the phone number for that business. The default output is JSON. This output format was chosen due to the availability of JSON parsers in many languages. The following Yelp Fusion APIs are available: Search, Phone Number Search, Business Search, Transaction, Reviews, and Autcomplete – each API has a separate ProgrammableWeb entry.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://www.yelp.com/developers
• API Categories: Business ratings and reviews, points of interest location and name, and pictures
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: JSON
• Supported Response Formats: Unknown

Google Maps

The Google Maps API allow for the embedding of Google Maps onto web pages of outside developers, using a simple JavaScript interface or a Flash interface. It is designed to work on both mobile devices as well as traditional desktop browser applications. The API includes language localization for over 50 languages, region localization and geocoding, and has mechanisms for enterprise developers who want to utilize the Google Maps API within an intranet. The API HTTP services can be accessed over a secure (HTTPS) connection by Google Maps API Premier customers.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://developers.google.com/maps/
• API Categories: Region localization and geocoding
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: KML, URI Query String/CRUD, XML, VML, JavaScript
• Supported Response Formats: XML, JSON, KML

Real Estate Cloud

Real Estate Cloud provides various services for real estate listings and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Their API currently provides services for searching and retrieving real estate data. This is a REST-based API that returns data in JSON, and requires an API key for access.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://wordpress.org/plugins/real-estate-mls-search/
• API Categories: MLS Search, SOLD Data, and Property Description
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: URI Query String/CRUD
• Supported Response Formats: JSON

School Digger

The SchoolDigger API provides K-12 data from over 123,000 schools. Information available includes test score data, demographics, and ranking. Additionally, the API offers school and district attendance boundaries, and polylines for mapping. JSON is used for responses, and the SchoolDigger API requires API Keys in order to gain access to its full capabilities.

• API Portal / Homepage: https://developer.schooldigger.com
• API Categories: School boundaries, polylines for maping, test score data, rankings and demographics
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: HTTP
• Supported Response Formats: JSON

DataNerds Property API

The DataNerds Property Data API integrates real estate data into social applications. Developers can send HTTP requests to receive GeoJSON, JSON, and XML responses, authorizing with API Key. They can integrate site, structure, ownership, tax, assessment, mortgages, market status, estimated market value, permit history, and comparables from 130 million properties in the United States. For access, contact [email protected].

• API Portal / Homepage: https://factory.datanerds.com
• API Categories: Property Data includes estimated marketing value, comps, site and structure information
• Architectural Style: REST
• Supported Request Formats: HTTP
• Supported Response Formats: GeoJSON, JSON, XML

Did we miss any? If you are a product owner, developer, or founder or the next big thing in real estate, let us know what sources you use to fuel your application and we'll add to this list. If you have any questions on our APIs or data available, feel free to fill out the form below. Thank you for your participation and happy building!

To view the original article, visit the Onboard Informatics blog.