Data Mining for Deals

[Bryce DeCora]

The Power of Automation

I am a mechanical engineer by day and a self-taught programmer by night, trying to find any way possible to snag deals before they hit the market.  Living near Seattle, deals tend to go fast.  I have recently developed an API that accepts a property Parcel Number and returns all information available about that property from the county page (currently only available for Snohomish County).  For those of you not familiar with a county property page, here is an example of one I have created an API for.  All of the property details listed here are available in json format via this API.

NOTE: An API is a programmer's portal to interact with data living somewhere else.  This is the key to integrating with other locations on the web.

If you're struggling to think of a situation where this would be useful, let me help you out with some examples:

• Use the API to check back taxes for each property in a list at the click of a button
• Get the listed owner and taxpayer for each property in a list, along with their home address... automated
• Get a list of all previous sales history for the property, when the sale took place, who purchased, who sold, how much... no problem
• Update a table showing an image of the property, number of bedrooms, floors, bathrooms, etc.

I'm interested in hearing about others who are developing or using similar technology.  I know there are some companies who have done this for a large part of the US and charge for their API use, but their systems are expensive and don't pull as much data as is available.  If you have more detailed questions about the API, interfacing with it, or project teamwork, shoot me a message!