Like a diesel-powered vacuum cleaner, Attom Data Solutions, formerly known as RealtyTrac, has been hoovering up property deeds, mortgage records, foreclosure filings and myriad other data, for more than two decades.
Its goal has been to become the preeminent provider of real estate data and acquiring competitors, such as Homefacts.com and Onboard Informatics, has been part of the strategy. A new data API (application programming interface) platform released by Attom, whose data purportedly covers 99 percent of Americans, marks the latest chapter in this quest.
The tool is designed to make it easier for websites, listing portals and apps to bake property and community information into their user experiences, such as by enabling sub-division-based listing search or the display of crime and education statistics on property pages. It also has applications in mortgage insurance and marketing, among other industries.
Attom Data Solutions’ brands include neighborhood information site Homefacts.com, foreclosure data provider RealtyTrac and property report provider Home Disclosure. The company’s website lists Re/Max, Compass, Knock and Roofstock as clients, among others.
The APIs available through the new platform bring together national property tax, deed, mortgage and foreclosure data; school, crime and other community information; and neighborhood and school attendance zones.
Also included are local “points of interests,” such as restaurants, banks and retail locations; demographic information, such as population and education statistics; weather averages, and commute times. Topping things off are home sales, price trends and automated valuations.
“Combining different but complementary real estate datasets into a single API platform allowed us to include some out-of-the-box real estate search options,” said Todd Teta, chief technology officer of Attom Data Solutions.
That includes supporting the ability to search by point and radius, or by different boundary levels, including subdivision or neighborhood.
Some of the data come from the data repository Attom gobbled up through its acquisition of Onboard Informatics earlier this year. Before joining Attom, Onboard itself acquired another data aggregator, property report provider, AddressReport, in 2016. This acquisition activity underlines a larger trend of consolidation across the real estate tech sector.
Developers can tap into the new APIs through a self-service platform. A free 30-day trial period is available with a maximum of 500 “calls” per day. Calls are data retrievals from an API.