Table of Contents
- What the ATTOM API Is Not
- Data Should Be Structured Not Scraped
- ATTOM API Vs. Property Data Web Scrapers
- ATTOM API Is Designed to Support Enterprise-Level Business Decisions
- Key Industries Using ATTOM’s API
- The Latest Are Not the Greatest, Go with the Industry Stalwart for Property Data
- Frequently Asked Questions
In our recent article, “Why Trust Matters in Property Data: Navigating a Market Full of New and Unproven Sources,” we noted how saturated the property data market had become.
New proptech startups are cropping up eager to cash in on the demand for real estate and financial insight data. However, these newcomers are often fly-by-night entities. They take shortcuts in their data collection and discovery. They scrape real estate websites, rely on incomplete feeds, or fail to consider historical data. These shortcuts often lead to flawed information and a bad reputation.
ATTOM’s API does none of these things. ATTOM has earned a stellar reputation based on decades of providing cutting edge data products, convenient delivery methods, and using the most reliable data sources. Here’s a look at what ATTOM’s property data API is and why it is a leading provider of property intelligence for developers and data teams.
What the ATTOM API Is Not
The ATTOM API isn’t a “lookup tool.” It is a production-grade data solution powering critical business processes like underwriting, automated valuation modeling (AVMs), risk modeling, insurance workflows, proptech apps, government analyses, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
The ATTOM API is also not an internet scraper. A scraper API is a software tool that automatically crawls websites, such as Zillow or Realtor.com, and extracts data. The technology companies that use scraping tools take the real estate data from these sites and repurpose it for market analysis, competitor monitoring, or creating new content on other platforms.
You might wonder what is wrong with the data that web scrapers provide, after all, AI resources like ChatGPT do much the same thing. That’s true, and it’s also true that ChatGPT is known for offering up flawed data.
Data Should Be Structured Not Scraped
One of the biggest uses of property data is for accurate property valuations. ATTOM’s AVM pulls in all the essential details of a property – square footage, number of rooms, or recent renovations – including neighborhood data and comps to provide an accurate valuation.
A scraper might miss important data points, such as a recent renovation, or unique features, that would dramatically impact a property’s value. The data provided by a scraper could be outdated. A scraped listing might have been sold a week ago, but if the scraper doesn’t run frequently enough, or the source website isn’t updated, the data will be stale
In contrast, dedicated data providers like ATTOM license data feeds from reliable sources. These sources include:
- public records
- geospatial data
- proprietary data
- third-party sources, such as licensed real estate brokers
ATTOM’s data are updated constantly so that users can trust ATTOM’s reliability when making critical business decisions.
ATTOM API Vs. Property Data Web Scrapers
There’s a wealth of difference between a licensed proptech provider and a web scraper. Reliable and established websites, think Zillow or Realtor.com, don’t want scrapers to steal their data, so they do everything they can to try to stop it from happening. Bonafide real estate platforms use sophisticated anti-scraping technology to detect and block scraping behavior.
For example,
- IP address blocking
- CAPTCHA challenges
- Analysis of “browser fingerprints.”
These techniques force scrapers to capture data using unreliable techniques that often don’t work.
When a real estate website changes its design and code, a scraping tool that habitually scans that platform would have to be modified if it is to continue to access that site’s data.
Another reason the data provided by a scraper could be flawed is that many websites use JavaScript to load content. A simple scraper might only read a page’s initial HTML code and miss other critical information, leading to incomplete datasets.
Reliable data providers like ATTOM deliver structured data that has been validated and cleaned ready to be purposed in real-world applications. Scrapers, on the other hand, pull unstructured data from a website’s code. If that scraper attempts to validate and clean the information it collects, it often introduces errors.
ATTOM API Is Designed to Support Enterprise-Level Business Decisions
Many of ATTOM’s users are enterprises. ATTOM’s products are not designed for hobby projects. It’s a platform for building not browsing.
It has taken decades for ATTOM to hone its stable, scalable, and proven delivery methods. ATTOM’s experience and rapid growth allows it to conduct expensive R&D so that its products are reliable and not experimental.
Also, ATTOM data are AI-ready so that large institutions can easily incorporate machine learning, large-scale modeling, and operational systems to their data analysis. Using ATTOM data boils down to smoother integration with legacy systems and lower business risk.
Key Industries Using ATTOM’s API
ATTOM property data continues to support key industries with market analytics and financial property data. Real estate, insurance, finance and mortgage, marketing, government, and utilities use ATTOM’s licensed data to power their business.
The trust that ATTOM has garnered among its customers has been built after providing stellar data services over time, supported by rigorous validation and consistent, transparent methodologies. That trust is further strengthened by ATTOM APIs, which make it easy for customers to integrate high quality property data directly into their workflows and power reliable decision making across real estate, mortgage, finance, insurance, and government use cases.
One President and General Counsel of a Title Insurance Company, said
“We have made ATTOM the data foundation of our digital title underwriting system.”
A Co-Founder and COO of a Private Lender Company in New York, said
“Property data from ATTOM helps fuel many aspects of our business including risk management and monitoring, loan origination, geographic targeting and preliminary title pulls to get a better understanding of loans as soon as they’re submitted. Another plus is that unlike other delivery solutions we have used, ATTOM’s Data-as-a-Solution or DaaS provides us with daily live updates of the data.”
The Latest Are Not the Greatest, Go with the Industry Stalwart for Property Data
While the newcomers to the proptech market might offer cheaper products. You get what you pay for. Large institutions choose developer-ready, enterprise-reliable, AI-compatible data knowing that anything less can lead to poor business strategy. Industry leaders choose licensing deals with proven providers to reduce risk and improve profitability.
To find out how ATTOM’s API can reliably serve your business, contact an ATTOM expert today!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What Is ATTOM API?
ATTOM API is a real estate data platform providing reliable, AI-ready property data for users in any industry. The data are collected from a range of reliable sources, such as public records and geospatial data. The data are cleaned and structured for application to AI analytics and for business decisions.
What kind of data does ATTOM provide?
ATTOM provides property tax, deed, mortgage, foreclosure, valuation, climate change risks, hazard, for more than 158 million U.S. residential and commercial properties.
Is ATTOM real estate data reliable?
ATTOM is not a web scraper. ATTOM provides quality and accurate data by using reliable sources, validating its data using cross-referencing, testing, and confidence scoring techniques.
How much does ATTOM data cost?
ATTOM’s data are available through licensing deals. The cost depends on individual needs. The products are designed for enterprise-level businesses. We do offer 30-day access for our Property API and 7-day trials for our Property Navigator tool.
