A catch-22 for real estate tech companies has been easy, free access real estate MLS data to develop web or mobile apps. MLSs usually require you to be working with a brokerage/agent customer before giving you access to real estate data. …

A couple of months ago I saw this request from Ryan Delk on Twitter: After a quick search I was able to find a real estate API matching his needs. It gave me an idea though, there are a lot of APIs for real estate data if you know where to look. So to make it easy I started a list of real estate APIs and broken them down by category. Some of the obvious ones are on here, Rets.ly, Zillow, Rets Rabbit, but there are a few more such as the great Community and Places API data from Onboard Informatics.

Getting a data feed for real estate listings can be challenging if you’re new to real estate technology and how MLSes handle data access. Knowing what to expect and what questions to ask can help save you a lot of time and help get your project started sooner. First, make…

Two new standards will impact every company in the real estate industry. I explain the importance of each and why as a real estate API company we’re embracing both. — This year will be seen at as a watershed moment for real estate technology, after years of fragmentation across MLSs the industry is finally embracing two key standards which will improve the way technology companies consume real estate data. The two standards from the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) are…

The most common question real estate startups ask me. — Running a real estate API company (RetsRabbit.com) I’ll often get this common question/request from eager real estate technology startups. “Hi we’re trying to create a real estate portal, how can we get access to all of the listings in the United States. Can your API provide us with this data?” …

What are the important sections of a typical service agreement and how each one protects you as a freelancer. At the beginning of a project we never really think about what would happen if the relationship goes bad and the client threatens you with legal action (or you have to threaten them with legal action). That’s human nature, we want to assume everything is going to go well, and…

I think the biggest problem freelancers face is determining what they’re actually worth. As an industry we’re so bad at it there are websites that exist where freelancers engage in a race to the bottom bidding war to build web sites for people who clearly don’t have a clue about…

What you need to know as a freelancer about how real estate listings are shared online I ran into a great question from a developer on twitter the other day: It’s a pretty common question among freelancers when they work or do a proposal for a real estate client. Unfortunately most clients don’t know the difference between IDX, MLS and RETS and use them interchangeably…

The concept of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) is a critical skill to master in writing solid, professional, and maintainable code. ExpressionEngine is built on top of CodeIgniter, and while the framework is showing it’s age compared to the new hotness that is Laravel, it does have some decent tools for…