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by ineedasername 1771 days ago
that data is damn near impossible to get free access to

How much does access cost? You're making a massive purchase. If that data is going to help you save a substantial amount by finding a diamond (or even some lesser precious gem) in the rough, it seems like it would be worth a few $hundred to save much more than that.
1 comments
iknowSFR 1771 days ago
HouseCanary is a leading data feed and is $150k/year. MLS offers a limited feed for around $1,500/month. You can scrape Zillow and use a captcha handler tool for $30/month.

There are distinct differences in these approaches. Zillow’s data lags 3-4 weeks while HouseCanary’s is about as real time as you can get. MLS can be weird and is typically market-specific. With all of that said, you can’t just login to a website and have this available. There is legwork required.

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ineedasername 1770 days ago
Wow that's expensive. I wonder if HouseCanary offers data limited to specific zip codes for less. It seems like that would be a logical product for small realtor business, but that might not be HouseCanary's target customer.

It looks like Zillow offers an API [0] though I'm not sure of the extent of its capabilities. Could be you don't need to go the scrape/captcha route though?

[0] https://www.zillow.com/howto/api/APIOverview.htm

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