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Scraping Realtor.com using Python

06-02-2023

Realtor is one of the biggest real estate listing platforms. Many people in and outside the United States use this website for buying, renting, or selling property. So, this website has a lot of property data and this huge data can be used to analyze future trends in any locality.

web scraping realtor.com

There are a lot of advantages of web scraping real estate data from real estate websites like realtor. For Realtors it could generate leads for the clients, for people looking to buy a property it could help to compare prices when you scrape prices from another real estate website like Zillow.

In this tutorial, we are going to scrape realtor.com using Python. We are going to target this page from Realtor.

Also, if you are new to web scraping with python, I have a comprehensive guide made for it here. Do check it out!!

properties in realtor.com
Properties in Realtor

You can open this page to analyze what it looks like and what is placed where.

Setting up the prerequisites to web scrape realtor.com data

Before we start coding we have to install certain libraries which are going to be used in the course of this article. I am assuming that you have already installed python 3.x on your machine.

Before installing the libraries let’s create a folder where we will keep our scraping files.

mkdir realtor

Now, let’s install the libraries.

pip install requests 
pip install beautifulsoup4

Requests — This will help us to make an HTTP connection with the host website.

BeautifulSoup will help us to create an HTML tree for smooth data parsing.

You should also create a python file where we will write the code.

What are we going to extract from realtor.com?

It is better to decide in advance what data you are going to scrape from the page. So, from our target page, we are going to scrape these details.

  • Property selling price
  • Property size, beds, etc.
  • Property address.
Property Details in Realtor.com
Property Details in Realtor.com

Let’s Start Scraping Realtor

Before writing the code we have to find the element located inside the DOM. First, let’s find in which tag all this information is stored after that we are going to extract our target data one by one using a for loop.

Inspecting Property Details in Source Code
Inspecting Property Details in Source Code

As you can see in the image above that all the data of all the properties is stored inside the class property-wrap of the div tag. Let’s code it in python.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

l=[]
o={}


target_url = "https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-Paltz_NY/type-single-family-home,multi-family-home"
head={"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/107.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"}

resp = requests.get(target_url, headers=head)

soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, 'html.parser')

allData = soup.find_all("div",{"class":"property-wrap"})

The code above is pretty straightforward but let me explain the code in step by step manner.

  1. We have imported all the libraries that we installed earlier in this post.
  2. Declare an empty list and an object for storing data later.
  3. Declared the target URL to target_url variable.
  4. Headers for passing while making a GET request.
  5. Using the requests library we made a GET request to the target website.
  6. Created an HTML tree using BeautifulSoup aka BS4.
  7. Using find_all method of BS4, we are going to find all the elements on the page with class property-wrap.

Now we can find our data of interest in the variable allData. We will use for loop on allData variable to iterate over all the properties one by one. But before that, we have to find the location of the price element.

Inspecting Price of the property in source code
Inspecting the Price of the property in the source code

As you can see the price text is stored under span the tag with the attribute data-label. Let’s implement this in our python script.

for i in range(0, len(allData)):
    o["price"]=allData[i].find("span",{"data-label":"pc-price"}).text

We are running a for loop on the list allData. Then we are going to use find() method to find the price element. The value of the attribute is pc-price. Now Let’s find the location of beds, baths, etc.

Showing Data placement in source code
Showing Data placement in source code

All this information is stored inside ul tag with class property-meta. After finding this element using find() method we have to find all these li tags where this data is actually stored. Once we find that we are again going to use the for loop to iterate over all the li tags.

metaData = allData[i].find("ul",{"class":"property-meta"})
allMeta = metaData.find_all("li")
for x in range(0, len(allMeta)):
        try:
            o["bed"]=allMeta[0].text
        except:
            o["bed"]=None

        try:
            o["bath"]=allMeta[1].text
        except:
            o["bath"]=None

        try:
            o["size-sqft"]=allMeta[2].text
        except:
            o["size-sqft"]=None

        try:
            o["size-acre"]=allMeta[3].text
        except:
            o["size-acre"]=None

After running the for loop we are finding each element by its index in the array allMeta. We have used try/except statement to avoid any error if we could not find any text on that particular position. Last thing which is left is the address of the property. Let’s find that too.

Inspecting which tag holds the location of property
Inspecting which tag holds the location of the property

You can simply find the address inside the div tag with the attribute data-label. The value of the attribute is pc-address.

o["address"]=allData[i].find("div",{"data-label":"pc-address"}).text
l.append(o)
o={}

In the end, we are storing every property data one by one inside the array l. Object o was declared empty at the end because we have to store another property data once the for loop starts again.

Finally, we managed to scrape all the data. The output will look like this.

[{'price': '$324,900', 'bed': '5bed', 'bath': '2bath', 'size-sqft': '2,664sqft', 'size-acre': '1.14acre lot', 'address': '15 Nepale Dr, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$299,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,643sqft', 'size-acre': '2.46acre lot', 'address': '15 Shivertown Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$429,000', 'bed': '1.8acre lot', 'bath': None, 'size-sqft': None, 'size-acre': None, 'address': '123 NY 208 Rte, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$250,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,111sqft', 'size-acre': '2.2acre lot', 'address': '403 State Route 32 N, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$250,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,111sqft', 'size-acre': '2.2acre lot', 'address': '403 Route 32, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$484,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '1,872sqft', 'size-acre': '1.3acre lot', 'address': '21 Angel Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$729,000', 'bed': '7,841sqft lot', 'bath': None, 'size-sqft': None, 'size-acre': None, 'address': '225 Main St, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$659,900', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '3.5bath', 'size-sqft': '3,100sqft', 'size-acre': '0.93acre lot', 'address': '8 Carroll Ln, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$479,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '2,184sqft', 'size-acre': '1.1acre lot', 'address': '447 S Ohioville Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$389,900', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1.5bath', 'size-sqft': '1,608sqft', 'size-acre': '1.1acre lot', 'address': '10 Canaan Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$829,900', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '4,674sqft', 'size-acre': '2.81acre lot', 'address': '8 Yankee Folly Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$639,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '2,346sqft', 'size-acre': '2.1acre lot', 'address': '4 Willow Way, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,995,000', 'bed': '5bed', 'bath': '4bath', 'size-sqft': '4,206sqft', 'size-acre': '51.3acre lot', 'address': '1175 Old Ford Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$879,000', 'bed': '8bed', 'bath': '5bath', 'size-sqft': '0.34acre lot', 'size-acre': None, 'address': '21 Grove St, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$209,900', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,276sqft', 'size-acre': '0.6acre lot', 'address': '268 State Route 32 S, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$3,375,000', 'bed': '6bed', 'bath': '5.5+bath', 'size-sqft': '7,996sqft', 'size-acre': '108acre lot', 'address': '28 Autumn Knl, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$449,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,662sqft', 'size-acre': '1.88acre lot', 'address': '10 Joalyn Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$550,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '3.5bath', 'size-sqft': '2,776sqft', 'size-acre': '1.05acre lot', 'address': '19 Meadow Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$399,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '950sqft', 'size-acre': '2acre lot', 'address': '23 Tracy Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$619,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '3,100sqft', 'size-acre': '5.2acre lot', 'address': '20 Carroll Ln, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,200,000', 'bed': '6bed', 'bath': '5.5bath', 'size-sqft': '4,112sqft', 'size-acre': '3.3acre lot', 'address': '55 Shivertown Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$425,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '1.5bath', 'size-sqft': '1,558sqft', 'size-acre': '0.88acre lot', 'address': '5 Cicero Ave, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$650,000', 'bed': '6bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '3,542sqft', 'size-acre': '9.4acre lot', 'address': '699 N Ohioville Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$524,900', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '2,080sqft', 'size-acre': '0.87acre lot', 'address': '210 Horsenden Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$379,999', 'bed': '2bed', 'bath': '1bath', 'size-sqft': '1,280sqft', 'size-acre': '0.53acre lot', 'address': '318 N State Route 32, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$589,999', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '2,300sqft', 'size-acre': '1.5acre lot', 'address': '219 S Ohioville Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$525,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '1,812sqft', 'size-acre': '0.35acre lot', 'address': '35 Bonticou View Dr, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$699,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '1,683sqft', 'size-acre': '10.87acre lot', 'address': '22 Cragswood Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,225,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '2,800sqft', 'size-acre': '5acre lot', 'address': '16 High Pasture Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,495,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '3,403sqft', 'size-acre': '5.93acre lot', 'address': '15 Cross Creek Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$699,999', 'bed': '5bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '1,956sqft', 'size-acre': '0.8acre lot', 'address': '265 Rt 32 N, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,495,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '3,428sqft', 'size-acre': None, 'address': '430 State Route 208, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$599,999', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '2,513sqft', 'size-acre': '0.43acre lot', 'address': '6 Old Mill Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$2,750,000', 'bed': '3bed', 'bath': '2.5bath', 'size-sqft': '2,400sqft', 'size-acre': '20.36acre lot', 'address': '44 Rocky Hill Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,100,000', 'bed': '5bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '5,638sqft', 'size-acre': '5acre lot', 'address': '191 Huguenot St, New Paltz, NY 12561'}, {'price': '$1,100,000', 'bed': '4bed', 'bath': '3bath', 'size-sqft': '2,540sqft', 'size-acre': '9.7acre lot', 'address': '100 Red Barn Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561'}]

Complete Code

You can make a few more changes to get more details from the page. You can scrape images, etc. But for now, the code will look somewhat like this.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

l=[]
o={}


target_url = "https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-Paltz_NY/type-single-family-home,multi-family-home"
head={"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/107.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"}

resp = requests.get(target_url, headers=head)

soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, 'html.parser')

allData = soup.find_all("div",{"class":"property-wrap"})

for i in range(0, len(allData)):
    o["price"]=allData[i].find("span",{"data-label":"pc-price"}).text
    metaData = allData[i].find("ul",{"class":"property-meta"})
    allMeta = metaData.find_all("li")
    for x in range(0, len(allMeta)):
        try:
            o["bed"]=allMeta[0].text
        except:
            o["bed"]=None

        try:
            o["bath"]=allMeta[1].text
        except:
            o["bath"]=None

        try:
            o["size-sqft"]=allMeta[2].text
        except:
            o["size-sqft"]=None

        try:
            o["size-acre"]=allMeta[3].text
        except:
            o["size-acre"]=None

    o["address"]=allData[i].find("div",{"data-label":"pc-address"}).text
    l.append(o)
    o={}

print(l)

Now there is some limitation when it comes to scraping realtor like this.

Realtor.com will start blocking your IP if it finds out that a script is trying to access its data at a rapid pace.

To avoid this we are going to use Scrapingdog Web Scraping API to scrape Realtor at scale without getting blocked.

Using Scrapingdog for scraping Realtor

You can start using Scrapingdog in seconds by just signing up. You can sign up from here and in the free pack, you will get 1000 free API credits. It will use new IP on every new request.

Scrapingdog to scrape realtor at scale
Scrapingdog to scrape realtor at scale

Once you sign up, you will be redirected to your dashboard. The dashboard will look somewhat like this.

Scrapingdog Dashboard Image
Scrapingdog Dashboard

Now, you can paste your target realtor page link to the left and then select JS Rendering as No. After this click on Copy Code from the right. Now use this API in your script to scrape realtor.

The code will remain the same as above but we just have to replace the target URL with the Scraping API URL.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

l=[]
o={}

target_url = "https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape?api_key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&url=https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-Paltz_NY/type-single-family-home,multi-family-home&dynamic=false"
head={"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/107.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"}

resp = requests.get(target_url, headers=head)

soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, 'html.parser')

allData = soup.find_all("div",{"class":"property-wrap"})

for i in range(0, len(allData)):
    o["price"]=allData[i].find("span",{"data-label":"pc-price"}).text
    metaData = allData[i].find("ul",{"class":"property-meta"})
    allMeta = metaData.find_all("li")
    for x in range(0, len(allMeta)):
        try:
            o["bed"]=allMeta[0].text
        except:
            o["bed"]=None

        try:
            o["bath"]=allMeta[1].text
        except:
            o["bath"]=None

        try:
            o["size-sqft"]=allMeta[2].text
        except:
            o["size-sqft"]=None

        try:
            o["size-acre"]=allMeta[3].text
        except:
            o["size-acre"]=None

    o["address"]=allData[i].find("div",{"data-label":"pc-address"}).text
    l.append(o)
    o={}

print(l)

Do remember to use your own API key while using this script. Just like this Scrapingdog can be used for scraping any website without getting BLOCKED.

Forget about getting blocked while scraping the Web

Try out Scrapingdog Web Scraping API with thousands of proxy servers and scrape Realtor.com at scale

Try Scrapingdog for Free Read Documentation

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we managed to scrape property prices for a given area from Realtor. If you want to scrape Realtor at scale then you might require a web scraping API that can handle all the hassle of proxy rotation and headless browsers.

You can scrape all the other pages by making changes to the target URL. You have to find the change in the URL structure once you click Next from the bottom of the page. In this manner, you will be able to scrape the data from the next page as well.

I hope you like this little tutorial and if you do then please do not forget to share it with your friends and on your social media.

No, realtor.com doesn’t offer an API for its data.

Additional Resources

Here are a few additional resources that you may find helpful during your web scraping journey:

Manthan Koolwal

My name is Manthan Koolwal and I am the founder of scrapingdog.com. I love creating scraper and seamless data pipelines.
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