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My project will average out the data on recent "sale-price over-or-under the asking-price" for an entire zipcode. This should produce a report showing you how t

My project will average out the data on recent "sale-price over-or-under the asking-price" for an entire zipcode. This should produce a report showing you how things are trending. I hope this will help people make an informed decision. Caveats : 1.This works for the USA only. 2.The report should take up to a minute to display as the data is being scraped from Zillow. 3.If the site does go down, it is due to the volume of traffic from reddit. Then I'm going to need to scale up my servers. I will try and stay on top of this. 4.If the no results are obtained, Zillow probably didn't have "sales" data for that zip code, or the connection to Zillow failed. I would just retry once again. I'm looking for feedback on these points: 1. How do I monatise without adverts? I would hate to display ads and kill the experience. 2. Do you want similar trends? Eg. I could also show "Average days in the market for properties", "Similar zip codes for your budget." etc 3. Would you be willing to register and voluntarily give up some data ? I would like to know where you are searching from, it will help me build a database of "Where are people from and where are they looking to move?" 4. Any thing that will help me improve is good.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
> 1. How do I monatise without adverts? I would hate to display ads and kill the experience. Well, selling it to Zillow is probably a natural fit. Or some other realtor org, but you'd probably have to change the source of your data.
linsomniac 4y ago
Can you recommend a zip code to try, I tried several in Northern Colorado and got "We did not get any results". One way you could monetize would be to make deals with MLSes for integration into their services, either for realtors or for consumers. Can't tell how appropriate it would be for realtors, I assume it's more oriented towards consumers. If there's some way to get to see Northern Colorado there, I can send it around to some POI in the local MLS and see what they think. Again, you might not be looking for MLS feedback. Disclaimer: I run coloproperty.com and the MLS. :-)
- tndibona 4y ago
  Try 19130
  - melenaboija 4y ago
    Not working for me
    - tndibona 4y ago
      Could you try now? I made hacker news front page so my site is getting hit with traffic and the proxy service data limit maxed out. I’ve just topped up the account.
      - melenaboija 4y ago
        It works now
- tndibona 4y ago
  Can we connect ? I will look up your info from your website
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    I replied in e-mail on the address on Pillr.
- philsnow 4y ago
  > I run coloproperty.com and the MLS How did you find yourself running those? What's your story if you don't mind me asking? I've known many people who got into real estate (just getting a realtor's license) on the side as a way to make some extra money, but to me the appeal has always been having access to the "raw" MLS information / hearing about properties before anybody else. Do you have any gut feeling for what percentage of properties never hit the market because of connections like these?
eclipxe 4y ago
You're likely breaking Zillow TOS, so expect a C&D before you monetize
- tndibona 4y ago
  I would be very happy if my project gains attention from a product manager from Zillow and they say “Why don’t we just let him pay for the data”. I’m unable to get their attention and they’re very cryptic about their GraphQL API spec.
  - WaxProlix 4y ago
    Hell yeah brother, greyhat on. Alas, you'll likely hear from a lawyer before a PM, but good luck nonetheless.
    - tndibona 4y ago
      Yeah. I feel like Zillow will pretend like all this data somehow belongs to them when it belongs to the public.
      - eclipxe 4y ago
        IANAL but just because it is public data doesn't mean that Zillows aggregation and capture of the data can't be subject to copyright.
        tndibona 4y ago
        Good point. IANAL too, But I can’t imagine copyrights on work that didn’t even belong to Zillow. It’s not creative content like a movie. They are just collecting data off existing sources. I could also argue that I’m redistributing the computed data done by my web app like the average, median, and the graph. Then I’d have to hide the Zillow results source table.
        4y ago
nocommandline 4y ago
>> How do I monatise without adverts? I think folks who are house hunting will find this useful when looking for comps (they will be getting information for multiple if not all houses in their target zip code in a table; they can easily digest the information in the table). So you could potentially charge a small fee (say $5 - $20) for house hunters to run this query and have the information available to them (say a link) for a month or so. During that period, they can click on the custom generated link and it will give them the most recent result. Same thing for 'Average days in the market' but this will be targeted at those looking to sell. The trick would be where to find these folks so they know about your service. Maybe advertise in housing forums or reddit (find the housing related forums)
- tndibona 4y ago
  The secure link is an awesome idea, thanks
  - leobg 4y ago
    House hunting bot. User specifies area by drawing on a map. Filter criteria like number of bedrooms, driving minutes to any particular address, etc.. Display as a sortable table.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Carfax model.
martin_ 4y ago
re #4 - tiny UX improvement: could you add a retry button? I keep waiting a minute, clicking return to homepage, retyping the zip, etc. edit: One other thing, it showed "Loading property 6 of undefined..." then back to "We did not get any results" which seems quirky.
- tndibona 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. My original plan was to load the data “live” as obtained using web sockets but that damn socket.io is proving to be unreliable. I’ll land up doing something like you recommended. As for the “loading property of undefined” , thanks for the report. A code cleanup is long overdue
impendia 4y ago
> How do I monatise without adverts? I found this interesting, and was immediately curious for more: what the data was like going back more than a month, if there are any correlations to number of bedrooms, school districts, or the like, etc. etc. I could imagine you coming up with very interesting auto-generated 40-50 page reports. I would not pay for this now, but when I was on the real estate market last year I might have. You could target individual buyers or sellers ($5-20 or so for a single report), real estate agents (some sort of subscription), or both -- don't know what the best strategy is.
- tndibona 4y ago
  As a prototype, now the data is fetched from Zillow and cached. I’d have to start saving data to disk and run queries for what your asking. Which is possible, I’m trying to buy time to build this out. I need to attract investment also. Thanks for your kind words.
harrisonjackson 4y ago
Hire a sales guy/team to sell this as a tool to realtors and wholesaling companies. They spend a ton of money on market analysis products because most of them don't have any sort of background that helps with it. If it helps them get 1 more client or help a listing sell for just a couple % more it has paid for itself. Button it up a bit, paywall it, run every zipcode as a job and cache the fully rendered html report the end user sees.
dclowd9901 4y ago
Monetisation: what about automated appraisal?
- mNovak 4y ago
  Like a Zestimate?
ddispaltro 4y ago
You should look at 94941, there some sort of anomaly.
- tndibona 4y ago
  Thanks for the report. I found the problem . Look here https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Eton-Way-Mill-Valley-CA-94941/19259013_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Eton-Way-Mill-Valley-C... If you scroll down you’ll see they made an error listing the property at 389million instead of 3.89 million. I’ll have to use some upper /lower limits in the graph to bump out outliers like this . It’s hard to pick a number, some distress sale properties get sold for very low prices
autoexec 4y ago
> How do I monatise without adverts? I would hate to display ads and kill the experience. I'd say go ahead and display ads, just do it without being obnoxious. Limit ads to small static images hosted on your own domain or text links, keep them unobtrusive, and don't use Google or any other evil surveillance capitalism company. Because the site is driven by zip code you've got a great opportunity to provide ads relevant to the area and not the specific user. Anyone who finds reasonable ads so off-putting that it would drive them away from your service will be using ad blockers anyway. Personally, I never register for websites if they require an email address unless they have a need to know my identity to accomplish what I want from them. Your site wouldn't meet that requirement so no registration for you. I'll sign up for some sites that need a registration but don't require a legit email address but they don't get my real info (fake names, addresses, etc) Remember that any information you collect you then have to retain, backup, secure, etc. and it puts on the hook for reporting data breaches and for gathering and handing all of that information over to governments and other parties in response to court orders. Never collect or store any more data than you absolutely need to and you'll have so much less to worry about. If you really really want to make money without ads, limit the number of accesses to something sane and charge the people who hammer your site day after day or week after week some fee for the trouble. They obviously find your service useful so maybe a small fee would be worth it to most of them. Maybe you can even offer to automatically push the kinds of data they keep requesting over and over again to them in some way.
substation13 4y ago
> 1.This works for the USA only. I'm pretty sure the splash image is London, UK. Very confusing!
- throwaway744678 4y ago
  And you'd be wrong! It appears to be from San Francisco (unless we are talking a different picture ?) https://www.housedigest.com/874861/the-iconic-san-francisco-painted-lady-that-was-featured-in-full-house-is-for-sale-for-3-55-million/ https://www.housedigest.com/874861/the-iconic-san-francisco-...
  - substation13 4y ago
    Right you are!
- tndibona 4y ago
  Fun fact. I used a beautiful image I took of cordoba Spain from the top of the mezquita as the backdrop. Someone on Reddit called me a Brazilian slum lord :(. So I put this San Francisco stock image

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago

> 1. How do I monatise without adverts? I would hate to display ads and kill the experience. Well, selling it to Zillow is probably a natural fit. Or some other realtor org, but you'd probably have to change the source of your data.

linsomniac 4y ago

Can you recommend a zip code to try, I tried several in Northern Colorado and got "We did not get any results". One way you could monetize would be to make deals with MLSes for integration into their services, either for realtors or for consumers. Can't tell how appropriate it would be for realtors, I assume it's more oriented towards consumers. If there's some way to get to see Northern Colorado there, I can send it around to some POI in the local MLS and see what they think. Again, you might not be looking for MLS feedback. Disclaimer: I run coloproperty.com and the MLS. :-)

tndibona 4y ago
Try 19130
- melenaboija 4y ago
  Not working for me
  - tndibona 4y ago
    Could you try now? I made hacker news front page so my site is getting hit with traffic and the proxy service data limit maxed out. I’ve just topped up the account.
    - melenaboija 4y ago
      It works now
tndibona 4y ago
Can we connect ? I will look up your info from your website
- linsomniac 4y ago
  I replied in e-mail on the address on Pillr.
philsnow 4y ago
> I run coloproperty.com and the MLS How did you find yourself running those? What's your story if you don't mind me asking? I've known many people who got into real estate (just getting a realtor's license) on the side as a way to make some extra money, but to me the appeal has always been having access to the "raw" MLS information / hearing about properties before anybody else. Do you have any gut feeling for what percentage of properties never hit the market because of connections like these?

eclipxe 4y ago

You're likely breaking Zillow TOS, so expect a C&D before you monetize

tndibona 4y ago
I would be very happy if my project gains attention from a product manager from Zillow and they say “Why don’t we just let him pay for the data”. I’m unable to get their attention and they’re very cryptic about their GraphQL API spec.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  Hell yeah brother, greyhat on. Alas, you'll likely hear from a lawyer before a PM, but good luck nonetheless.
  - tndibona 4y ago
    Yeah. I feel like Zillow will pretend like all this data somehow belongs to them when it belongs to the public.
    - eclipxe 4y ago
      IANAL but just because it is public data doesn't mean that Zillows aggregation and capture of the data can't be subject to copyright.
      - tndibona 4y ago
        Good point. IANAL too, But I can’t imagine copyrights on work that didn’t even belong to Zillow. It’s not creative content like a movie. They are just collecting data off existing sources. I could also argue that I’m redistributing the computed data done by my web app like the average, median, and the graph. Then I’d have to hide the Zillow results source table.
        4y ago

nocommandline 4y ago

>> How do I monatise without adverts? I think folks who are house hunting will find this useful when looking for comps (they will be getting information for multiple if not all houses in their target zip code in a table; they can easily digest the information in the table). So you could potentially charge a small fee (say $5 - $20) for house hunters to run this query and have the information available to them (say a link) for a month or so. During that period, they can click on the custom generated link and it will give them the most recent result. Same thing for 'Average days in the market' but this will be targeted at those looking to sell. The trick would be where to find these folks so they know about your service. Maybe advertise in housing forums or reddit (find the housing related forums)

tndibona 4y ago
The secure link is an awesome idea, thanks
- leobg 4y ago
  House hunting bot. User specifies area by drawing on a map. Filter criteria like number of bedrooms, driving minutes to any particular address, etc.. Display as a sortable table.
dboreham 4y ago
Carfax model.

martin_ 4y ago

re #4 - tiny UX improvement: could you add a retry button? I keep waiting a minute, clicking return to homepage, retyping the zip, etc. edit: One other thing, it showed "Loading property 6 of undefined..." then back to "We did not get any results" which seems quirky.

tndibona 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback. My original plan was to load the data “live” as obtained using web sockets but that damn socket.io is proving to be unreliable. I’ll land up doing something like you recommended. As for the “loading property of undefined” , thanks for the report. A code cleanup is long overdue

impendia 4y ago

> How do I monatise without adverts? I found this interesting, and was immediately curious for more: what the data was like going back more than a month, if there are any correlations to number of bedrooms, school districts, or the like, etc. etc. I could imagine you coming up with very interesting auto-generated 40-50 page reports. I would not pay for this now, but when I was on the real estate market last year I might have. You could target individual buyers or sellers ($5-20 or so for a single report), real estate agents (some sort of subscription), or both -- don't know what the best strategy is.

tndibona 4y ago
As a prototype, now the data is fetched from Zillow and cached. I’d have to start saving data to disk and run queries for what your asking. Which is possible, I’m trying to buy time to build this out. I need to attract investment also. Thanks for your kind words.

harrisonjackson 4y ago

Hire a sales guy/team to sell this as a tool to realtors and wholesaling companies. They spend a ton of money on market analysis products because most of them don't have any sort of background that helps with it. If it helps them get 1 more client or help a listing sell for just a couple % more it has paid for itself. Button it up a bit, paywall it, run every zipcode as a job and cache the fully rendered html report the end user sees.

dclowd9901 4y ago

Monetisation: what about automated appraisal?

mNovak 4y ago
Like a Zestimate?

ddispaltro 4y ago

You should look at 94941, there some sort of anomaly.

tndibona 4y ago
Thanks for the report. I found the problem . Look here https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Eton-Way-Mill-Valley-CA-94941/19259013_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Eton-Way-Mill-Valley-C... If you scroll down you’ll see they made an error listing the property at 389million instead of 3.89 million. I’ll have to use some upper /lower limits in the graph to bump out outliers like this . It’s hard to pick a number, some distress sale properties get sold for very low prices

autoexec 4y ago

> How do I monatise without adverts? I would hate to display ads and kill the experience. I'd say go ahead and display ads, just do it without being obnoxious. Limit ads to small static images hosted on your own domain or text links, keep them unobtrusive, and don't use Google or any other evil surveillance capitalism company. Because the site is driven by zip code you've got a great opportunity to provide ads relevant to the area and not the specific user. Anyone who finds reasonable ads so off-putting that it would drive them away from your service will be using ad blockers anyway. Personally, I never register for websites if they require an email address unless they have a need to know my identity to accomplish what I want from them. Your site wouldn't meet that requirement so no registration for you. I'll sign up for some sites that need a registration but don't require a legit email address but they don't get my real info (fake names, addresses, etc) Remember that any information you collect you then have to retain, backup, secure, etc. and it puts on the hook for reporting data breaches and for gathering and handing all of that information over to governments and other parties in response to court orders. Never collect or store any more data than you absolutely need to and you'll have so much less to worry about. If you really really want to make money without ads, limit the number of accesses to something sane and charge the people who hammer your site day after day or week after week some fee for the trouble. They obviously find your service useful so maybe a small fee would be worth it to most of them. Maybe you can even offer to automatically push the kinds of data they keep requesting over and over again to them in some way.

substation13 4y ago

> 1.This works for the USA only. I'm pretty sure the splash image is London, UK. Very confusing!

throwaway744678 4y ago
And you'd be wrong! It appears to be from San Francisco (unless we are talking a different picture ?) https://www.housedigest.com/874861/the-iconic-san-francisco-painted-lady-that-was-featured-in-full-house-is-for-sale-for-3-55-million/ https://www.housedigest.com/874861/the-iconic-san-francisco-...
- substation13 4y ago
  Right you are!
tndibona 4y ago
Fun fact. I used a beautiful image I took of cordoba Spain from the top of the mezquita as the backdrop. Someone on Reddit called me a Brazilian slum lord :(. So I put this San Francisco stock image