“Deep beneath everything, there’s data”

The power of data cannot be stressed enough. Anything that is today, and there will be in the future all started somewhere at some granular level with the insights drawn upon data.

With just data, there’s nothing much you can do. Essentially, data with quality is out of which remarkable insights are born.

Digital innovations born out of this data have been disrupting every industry. The ways and means of doing business have been transformed incredibly in the past decade or so.

Is the real estate market any different?

Fortunately not!

As pointed out by NAR, about 92% of buyers house-hunt online. Online research is the most convenient and easy form of acquiring instant information and it does not limit to just that. Moving from traditional classifieds to websites or apps or digitizing anything for that matter, offers some broad benefits – effective community outreach, curating real-time updates, indexed listings, and exposure to exhaustive data points.

“Online real estate business draws buyers and sellers closer, promotes transparency, and unleashes the power of progress”

The meaty role of data in real estate business

A good, credible, and informative real estate website has a huge database of real estate listings covering wide data points like – property details, buyer and seller information, and agent information. Hence, scraping real estate data enables users to make data-driven decisions with ease. 

A large pool of information that is authentic and credible will help buyers make a more informed decision.

To acquire these data across the internet, real estate organizations rely on web scraping and real estate data API.

How to get this real estate data?

Particularly for web scraping real estate data, people search for various aspects – real estate listings, agent information, the price of the property, plot information, seller profiles, and a lot more.

To provide the best real estate services, you need to have a repository of data that covers vast data points spread. Also, constantly refreshing this information will make you more reliable. This data could be stuck in websites, classifieds, or any other digital source. Web scraping real estate data will help you own the most exhaustive and authentic information that your clients can trust in terms of quality and in making informed decisions. Today firms are employing reliable real estate scrapers and real estate data API to extract data from numerous sources to stay relevant in the real estate landscape. 

Some valuable data points to scrape:

  • Agent information
  • Property data
  • Price data
  • Address
  • Reviews
  • Property size
  • City/State/Zip code
  • Rent price
  • Images

Web scraping process: The path to a more rewarding real estate business

Web scraping real estate data would mean setting up web crawlers to scrape the desired data points held in real estate websites and other sources like digital classifieds. The bots would fetch this data and the information will be transformed into a structured format that enables analytics.

This data can be integrated using different formats or through any preferred database options. It could be integrated through FTP/AWS in CSV, XML, and text files.

Apart from having the basic property details, your portals should have details of agents, legal teams for real estate business, brokers, value assessment providers, etc. Such data will help you stand out from the competition and attract more visitors to your site considering the vast amount of information you offer.

Data becomes stale over a period of time due to constant changes and updates. You can also stay updated with the changes by getting notified about them through periodic web scraping and real estate APIs that can span over a week, month, or beyond.

The Millennial momentum

The main target for the real estate business must hands down be the millennials – as the kids who rode their bikes on the suburbs a decade back, now fall under the main investor groups in the real estate market. The reason being – moving or shifting houses due to frequent job changes, moving to new cities, investment as an option, etc.

This clan is known for its online presence, and most of the deals conclude as a result of apartment hunting through online searches. Also, they are on the lookout for plenty of information covering a broad spectrum of questions like:

-Previous owners of property

-Restaurants close by

-Price information

-Who else is interested ( in order to explore roommate options)

-Safety/security

-Proximity to the workplace ( Transit facility)

So to be able to cover tons of questions, you need to have enough data. Though you cannot accommodate oceans of data points on your site, you must never have shallow content that

Innovate with information: The age of apps

To get close to personalized experience, there’s a need to innovate. The real estate industry is just warming up with innovation through AI.

An evolution from web to personalized site to the app would ideally be adding intelligence to elevate the experience by getting a step closer with your customer by understanding the search patterns and giving suggestions parallel to their choices. For instance, if the buyer’s search is aligned to a feature, say an in-house laundry unit, then your website or app would basically recommend houses with similar facilities.

Some interesting innovations like 3D house feature that will enable a google street view to take a glimpse of the inside of the house are also something you can innovate through your apps.

Apart from this, tons of features like connecting to agents, live chatbots, notifying when a new property is listed that closely aligns with search and taste, analyzing search patterns and giving recommendations and a lot more.

The entire process requires immense efforts, investment in resources, trial and error, research, and accommodation for risks.

But what is the one major barrier?

Hands-down, building the foundation for this very thought needs data. Getting this data that forms the basis for all the savvy innovations you are ready to put out in the market is already out there.

The process of web scraping will help you build a strong database from where some tremendous evolutions will take place. As you look back, there will be data that has enabled you to triumph by walking you through the path to innovation.

Every real estate business needs web scraping solutions

The real estate industry is blossoming with vast opportunities day after day. Staying relevant to the online search trends is paramount to success. There is no better solution than scraping information to offer the best service to your customers in the form of quality data.  A focused real estate scraper will keep you up to date on market changes, enabling you to capitalize on market opportunities. Also, using the same information as the foundation to disrupt the industry with newer technology and innovations in the form of highly intelligent apps.

Scrapeworks is perfectly engineered to fulfill all your real estate web scraping needs. It can be the base for your dreams to innovate and revolutionize the market.

You can set your parameters for the scraping requirements and we can deliver the data that you want.

Read through our customer stories to understand how we helped a US-based commercial real estate firm extract property data with ownership and lease details and how we aggregated construction tender information from government and public sources.

If you have a similar need, do get in touch with us.

  Nandhini

  Blogger and Community Manager

Author