As you know, Trulia started as one of the early real estate mash-ups on the Web 2.0 scene. We thought it was only right (and about time) that we gave a little back to the developer community by providing access to otherwise private data from Trulia.com through the Trulia API.
What’s in the Trulia API?
The Trulia API provides access to two primary types of information for every state, county, city, ZIP code and neighborhood across the US, including:
1) Local real estate price trends - Average list price of homes for sale on Trulia, available from national down to the neighborhood level. Data available by number of bedrooms, dating back to November 2006.
2) Real estate search behavior online - Search traffic from national down to the neighborhood level, dating back to June 2006. Data is expressed as a percentage of traffic.
So with the Trulia API you can find out information like:
- “What was the average price of a 2-bedroom home in ZIP 94002 on the week of 11/27/2006?” (Answer: $809,533)
- “Which neighborhood was the biggest winner/loser in Manhattan over the past 6 months in terms of search traffic?” (Answer: winner=Flatiron District, loser=Battery Park City)
- We also have “helper data,” listing of all the cities/counties/ZIPs in every state, as well the longitude and latitude info for any of these locations.
You can use the Trulia API data to build a host of applications–from your own spin on our Heat Map, to home price forecasting tools, to mashups of Trulia’s data with…really any other source of data.
Can’t wait to get started? We couldn’t either.
A week ago we held a hackfest at good ‘ole 500 Treat Avenue to separate the cubs from the bears and illustrate the (infinite) possibilities of the Trulia API. The office was broken up into groups, and we all had 24-hours to brainstorm, design and build our hacks. We came up with more ideas than I will document here, but here are the winners, ready (or not) for public consumption:
PlotorNot merges average list price data for cities across the US with a diverse group of demographic variables to answer questions such as: “Do people pay more to live in cities with more women in New York state?” and “Do people flee the rain in Washington state?“ Data sources: Trulia API, US Census Bureau, flickr and public data sources. Credit to Roger and his entourage for gifting us with plotornot.
Truliaholic helps users visualize the differences in average list prices and search popularity for any city or county in the US. Data source: Trulia API. Credit goes to Erica and her crack team for their mastery of data visualization.
For developers: to learn more about the data made available by the Trulia API, head to our developer pages for full documentation, a forum and blog specifically to ask questions and discuss the API. As you build cool tools, let us know and we’ll add your apps to the application gallery to show off to the world!
Popularity: 8% [?]
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February 20th, 2007 at 11:17 am
This looks very, very cool! Can’t wait to check it out!
February 20th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
super awesome!
February 21st, 2007 at 1:07 am
Looks fantastic! Can’t wait to build something with it
February 21st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
What an incredible opportunity for brokers and realtors to utilize data and technology from one of the leading real estate portals on the web today. It’s hard to believe this kind of service exists at all, let alone for Trulia to be giving it away for free. Kudos to Trulia for being a forward think company!
March 9th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
would like to know how we can get our listings on this site?
Susan Oswald
Ed Oswald Real Estate, Inc.
March 10th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Hi,
I am a Sr. Independent Software Developer creating at present some add ons to Google’s, ‘Google Earth’. Prior to the recent introduction of Trulia’s new API suite, I had been creating an add on to ‘Google Earth’, to assist, by providing a dynamic ( Fly-To ) of a Trulia Real Estate property for an active user with the Google Earth’s internal browser. I am just curious if this add on will benefit developers building with Trulia’s new API suite.
Scenario:
A user while visiting a Trulia real estate property would simply double-click on the viewed web page. They then, will be immediately ( Flown-To ) that property location within ‘Google Earth’. This action allows the user the benefits of the ( Layer Sections ) of ‘Google Earth’. Layer Sections provide to the user various entities of insight full information’s to make ( His/Her ) property choice.
Benefit:
I believe that this will reduces the amount of Network Linkage overhead that is at present. Bandwidth is a precious commodity still to many. It is required of the user to download a new KMZ’s or KML’s property locations when discovering new additional properties during a browsing session from Trulia’s website. This add on will lessen the co-dependency of activation required of the user. Currently, from Trulia, a user must first activate the ( Places ) Placemarks of ‘Google Earth’. Secondly, it is required of the user to launch the ( Placemark’s Ballon ) just to get the data that is visible in a Trulia’s website property listing.
This is a beta project I’ve been working on for browser interaction with ‘Google Earth’.
This is NOT currently available to the public at this time.
Any comments or suggestions ?
Regards,
Richard Tharp
March 21st, 2007 at 10:32 am
Is this Tulia, Texas 79088 ?
Where is Truila ?
March 21st, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Hi Richard,
It appears that what you are asking for is an API which exposes individual listings. At the current time, we are offering aggregated statistics about properties and not the data for any individual property. If I understand correctly, this will not help your project. However, if there is anything we can do to help you out, feel free to email us at developer@trulia.com and contact the API team directly.
Thanks!
Lawrence
Software Developer - Trulia
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Great stuff guys, can’t wait to see what else you come up with!
The charting stuff is really useful.
Richard, we already did that over a year ago on all of our listings.
Jessie B.
ForSalebyOwnerCenter.com
March 25th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Sorry for the confusing !
What I am trying to convey is I’ve created an add on that allows an user of Google Earth, using the internal web browser ( ON ), to tour the Trulia.com website and to be immediately ( FLOWN-TO ) in Google Earth to the prospective property. This is without the effort for the user to looking for the Google Earth on Trulia.com of that said property or wait for a download of KML files. By the way, the Google Earth that you show on Trulia.com is depreciated for the user viewing proximity to area Schools, Grocery Stores, Gas Stations, Dining, Pharmacies, Churches and Hospitals with many other additional Google Earth’s Layered information’s.
And,
Jessie B.
ForSalebyOwnerCenter.com
There is not a Single Forum on Google Earth that promotes that you’ve done ANY work as for as an add on to Google Earth that provides this type of intervention to aid the user of Google Earth to dynamically FLY-TO locations of properties other than your company supplying the necessary KML files to foster this effort. After a user has populated the Placemarkers in PLACES in Google Earth, it becomes WAY to cumbersome and blurred with to many entry.
Regards,
Richard Tharp
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Hi,
I am a realtor in Westhampton Beach, New York.
How do I go about getting my real estate listings on your site?
Regards,
Janice Hayden
631-255-9160
April 12th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Can you provide any information on the accuracy provided by this tool. I believe the tool could be interesting, however, if it is like the tools on Zillow, I would caution its use before there is enough datat to actually be able to help the consumer.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Hi Ryan,
Our API uses the same data as is used by our heat maps - meaning it compiles the data from actual Trulia traffic and for sale listings. As you probably know, this is different than Zillow’s approach, as they only provide data from their Zestimates. Hopefully you find this useful - if you don’t, feel free to offer any suggestions either here or by contacting developers@trulia.com
Thanks!
Lawrence
Software Developer - Trulia
April 21st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Trulia has introduced a great new concept on real estate search engines by not
only displaying the listings but also an array of other important information
tied to the listing pages. The interactive heat maps and design just shows
how creative and eye catching trulia is!
July 28th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
To all you people who seem to be posting to this blog for links, Trulia is using
NO-FOLLOW tags on the links that you place here. Making any links that you place totally usless as far as search engine improvment. So don’t post just looking
for good links.
November 21st, 2007 at 8:22 am
thanks for the GREAT post! Very useful…
February 5th, 2008 at 2:50 am
This is quite awesome!
February 5th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Cool!
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Happy Anniversary to the API’s. Loving em. Great work.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:37 am
Found a sweet Trulia API demo:
http://www.goondocks.com/projects/Trulia_API_Demo.aspx
March 15th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Will your APIs be available on zembly (http://zembly.com) ?