The real estate industry, like so many others, has moved online. It is now more convenient than ever to start your real estate journey from the comfort of your home. In fact, NAR reported that 92% of home buyers look for houses online. Whether you’re looking to buy or rent a property, the internet is the best place to start your search. How can you ensure that you get to the best listings first with so much competition?
In this article, we’ll be looking into real estate web scraping or harvesting, and how it can help you get the best property deals possible. We’ll also discuss what web scraping can be used for apart from finding the best deals. We’ll also briefly mention using rotating proxies to generate a random IP address for each search so that the sites cannot block you. Keep reading to discover how to get the most out of online real estate by using web harvesting practices.
What Is Real Estate Web Scraping?
Real estate web scraping is the process of collecting property and consumer data across multiple real estate and aggregator websites. This data can be used to identify available properties, consumers’ needs, and prices.
The following real estate data can easily be collected through web harvesting:
Property
With web scraping, you can collect details on the properties, such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, property size, bonus features, and more. You can also set your scraper to collect data on specific properties only, such as only commercial properties of a certain size or homes with only three bedrooms and a yard.
Pricing
Property prices can fluctuate drastically according to location, demand, size, and property type. With web harvesting, you can collect these prices to determine average prices for certain property types in specific areas. This will help you determine if prices are fair and reasonable.
Home Buyers
If you’re a realtor, then buyers are your target audience. You can use web scraping to identify neighborhoods and areas in high demand; you can collect reviews on properties to see what customers liked and what they didn’t.
Competitors
As a realtor, web harvesting competitors’ websites will give you an idea of their pricing, property availability, and how they market certain properties. With these insights, you’ll be able to identify areas within your pricing, availability, and marketing that can be improved.
Public Records
You can web scrape public records to find out insurance, loans, mortgage records, and much more on the property you’re interested in.
The Role of Proxies in Real Estate Web Scraping?
There are numerous web scraping tools that you can use to automate the entire web harvesting process. Some of these include ScrapeBox, Octoparse, and ParseHub, to name just a few. However, if you were to use these tools on their own, you might find that your IP address gets blocked following numerous scraping attempts. So, how can you continue to collect this information without getting banned?
The answer is to use your scraping tool with a reliable proxy. A rotating proxy is especially valuable and will not only protect your identity and keep you from being tracked, but it will also assign you a random IP address for each scraping request so that you don’t get banned from the sites you’re scraping.
What Can Real Estate Scraping Be Used For?
There are many uses for real estate web scraping. Not just for the individual home buyer looking for a good deal but also for realtors looking to make the best sales. Let’s look at a few things that you can do with real estate data collected through web harvesting.
Property Value Tracking
By using web scraping, you can determine the value of a property. By collecting the sale values of similar properties in the area, you can get a good idea of what your property should be priced at or if the property you’re looking at is listed at a fair price.
Making the Right Investment
Investors can use web harvesting to collect important and relevant empirical data, which they can use to analyze and find the best investment opportunities.
Rental Yield
Rental yield is an important factor, especially if you plan on investing in an income-generating property. You can use web scraping to collect information on which properties have the highest rental yield. You can also find what type of property (two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc.) has the highest rental yield. This information will make it easier to decide which area to buy property in and what type of property you should consider.
Track Vacancy Rates
Having a vacant property is a big risk that no one wants. As such, it’s important to analyze property data and suburb information to identify properties with lower vacancy rates. By knowing which properties have lower vacancy rates, you can rest assured that your investment will be secure with decent returns.
Final Thoughts
The real estate industry has become very big online, with most buyers conducting their home search on the internet. This also means that it is much more competitive, as buyers can quickly compare prices for properties between different realtors. As such, realtors need data to ensure they stay ahead of the competition. Real estate scraping is the ideal solution for realtors to quickly collect vast amounts of property data.