Zillow Group is inviting hackers, coders, designers and engineers to dream up new real estate software at an all-night “hackathon” at its San Francisco offices, Nov. 6 through 8.
At the event, dubbed “zip.code,” developers will have access to real estate data from MLSs and data companies — covering over 3,000 U.S. counties — powered by Zillow Group subsidiary Retsly. Zillow acquired the Vancouver-based firm, which aims to standardize real estate data, in July 2014.
The three-day event will culminate in demos open to the public and $25,000 in prize money, split among six winners (see below). Zillow Group has room for 300 participants.
“We’re excited this event will begin to explore what’s possible when you connect the brightest developers with high-quality real estate data directly from MLS and public records,” said Errol Samuelson, Zillow Group chief industry development officer, in a statement.
Judges will select four winners in two categories: two that best used Retsly’s listing data application programming interface (API); and two that best used the firm’s public data API. The winners in each category will get $5,500, and the runners-up will get $3,000.
Attendees will vote for the remaining two winners. The winner will get $5,000; the runner-up, $3,000.
Zillow Group is donating all proceeds to charity.
Zillow hosted its first hackathon in February, when it invited developers to its Seattle headquarters for “Hack Housing: Empowering Smarter Decisions.” Participants competed for $10,000 in prize money for devising solutions that help homebuyers find information about government housing programs.
Retsly’s not a hackathon newbie, either. It partnered with Realogy for a November 2013 event attended by over 150 developers. On-demand showing platform Curb Call was a runner-up at that event.