What is Zillow Data?
Zillow Data refers to the comprehensive collection of real estate information, analytics, and market metrics provided by Zillow Group. This includes property listings, home values, rental estimates, market trends, demographic information, and historical sales data compiled from multiple listing services (MLS), public records, and user-generated content.
The dataset covers millions of properties across the United States and provides information on pricing, inventory levels, days on market, and neighborhood characteristics. Zillow Data serves real estate professionals, investors, researchers, and consumers who need access to property and market information for decision-making purposes.
The Founding Story Behind Zillow Data
Zillow was founded in 2006 by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives who aimed to bring transparency to the real estate market. The company launched with its signature Zestimate feature, which provided automated home valuations using public data and proprietary algorithms.
Over time, Zillow expanded its data collection efforts by aggregating information from public records, MLS feeds, and user submissions. The company developed partnerships with brokerages and data providers to build one of the largest real estate databases in the country. Zillow’s approach focused on making previously hard-to-access real estate information available online to anyone.
What Zillow Data Offers and Supports
Zillow Data provides several core offerings through various platforms and API access. The Zillow database includes Zestimate valuations, Rent Zestimate figures, and property detail pages with tax assessments, square footage, lot size, and sale history.
The data supports market analysis through metrics such as median home values, inventory counts, and price trends at the national, state, metro, city, ZIP code, and neighborhood levels. Zillow Research publishes market reports covering housing inventory, affordability indices, and forecasts.
Additionally, Zillow offers data products such as the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Dataset (ZTRAX), which contains property transaction records and assessor data. The platform tracks metrics like absorption rate to measure how quickly homes sell in specific markets, along with submarket analysis and insights into shadow market activity where off-market transactions occur.
Use Cases for Zillow Data in Real Estate
Real estate agents use Zillow Data to create comparative market analyses (CMAs) and identify pricing trends in their territories. The data helps agents understand local inventory levels and competition within specific submarkets.
Investors and analysts rely on Zillow Data to evaluate market conditions, identify emerging markets, and assess property values for acquisition or disposition strategies. Appraisers may reference Zillow’s property details and sale comparables as supplementary information during valuation processes.
Lenders and mortgage professionals use Zillow Data to pre-screen properties and evaluate collateral values. Researchers and economists access Zillow’s datasets to study housing market dynamics, affordability trends, and economic patterns across different regions.
Real-World Applications of Zillow Data
A property investor might use Zillow Data to identify neighborhoods with declining absorption rates, signaling potential buying opportunities as inventory accumulates. By analyzing trends across multiple submarkets within a metro area, the investor can target areas with favorable price-to-rent ratios.
A real estate brokerage could integrate Zillow Data into its internal CRM system to automatically update property values and market statistics for client presentations. This allows agents to provide current market insights during listing appointments or buyer consultations.
Urban planners and policymakers use Zillow Research data to understand housing supply constraints and affordability challenges. The shadow market data helps reveal patterns in private sales and pocket listings that don’t appear in traditional MLS statistics, providing a more complete picture of market activity.
