nytimes.com Launches Real Estate API

The New York Times’ online counterpart, nytimes.com, has announced a new real estate API (application programming interface) that provides an information database for New York home hunters. The API uses sales data from the New York City Department of Finance dating back to 2003 and New York Times classified listings from 2007 onwards.

This is the tenth API to emerge from the New York Times developer network. According to the announcement on the nytimes.com blog, “The API offers aggregate data divided into two sets: listings and actual sale prices. You can get the number (”counts”) of listings and sales per ZIP code, neighborhood and borough, for various building types and date ranges. You can also get percentile prices for listings and sales per ZIP code, neighborhood and borough, again for various building types and time periods.”

A review of the API on programmableweb.com points out that: “The API would be more useful if one could drill down from a result set into individual listings or sales, but like any well-constructed API there is a version number, so perhaps that feature will appear later.”

The review suggests the API could be used to create “mashups” that show fluctuations in neighborhoods or types of properties – an idea echoed in a recent post from futureofrealestatemarketing.com.

1. Nicaraguan Online Real Estate Market

   This is a guest post from Claudia Gonella, co-founder of Reveal Real Estate. She writes regularly on the state of the Nicaragua real estate market....

2. Yahoo! Real Estate Improvements

   Yahoo! Real Estate has launched some improvements to its property search, as a result of its new open real estate strategy. ...

3. Yahoo! Real Estate on the Rise

   Yahoo! Real Estate is forging ahead in the US, with visitor numbers and data feeds on the increase. ...

4. The Challenges for Google Real Estate

   The launch of Google Real Estate search on Google Maps in Australia, the US and New Zealand has shaken the property portal world. It is expected that Google Real Estate will make an appearance in the UK and German markets shortly. Last week we published our initial thoughts on what the launch of Google Real Estate will mean for the existing portal sites in Australia. These thoughts are equally applicable for portal sites around the world. Having followed the debate about Google Real Estate and its potential impact on portal sites, we thought it would be good to outline what we believe has to fall into place for Google to truly impact the property portal market leaders around the world....

5. Google Real Estate in Europe – What is All the Fuss About? Lessons from Australia

   The news yesterday that Google was “entering” the UK/European market sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. The Seloger share price closed down 5.7% at €23.50 while the Rightmove share price was hammered a whopping 10.3% to 499.9p. So let’s look at what happened. An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia. Did Google really have that much impact on the Australian market?...