Zillow is opening up its doors to developers for a weekend “hackathon” competition that will run Feb. 6-8 at its Seattle headquarters. The top three winners will be awarded cash prizes with a grand prize of $10,000.
With access to real estate data from Zillow and the federal government, participants in “Hack Housing: Empowering Smarter Decisions” will be tasked with coming up with solutions that make it easier for first-time homebuyers, low-income renters and senior citizens to access information about government housing programs and to find the homes that qualify under them.
Zillow will make its data available on home values and rents to developers at the event, which is being held in conjunction with the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering. They’ll also have access to various data sets from the federal government, including federal housing programs, apartment buildings with accessible apartments and transit information.
The projects will be judged by a panel of local tech leaders, entrepreneurs and federal government officials specializing in big data and open data.
For more information or to register, visit the event’s registration page here. See the event’s rules here.