It’s time to get back on the bandwagon.  My final year project is to create a website that combines property sales with social actions, something like a social website for property sales.  The idea is to remove the need for an estate agent.

Whats required?

Apart from a lot of programming time, some research, a few reports, the most important feature is a webservice that provides data for properties already on the market.

Initially the idea was to use Google Base as I’ve used this in the past, however Google sank that ship shortly after I drew up the project proposal.  I’m now left with providers which include Zoopla and Nestoria which could allow the ability to import from a third party website, a major feature of the system.

The Retired Google Base

I know, I need to let it go! From memory working with Google Base – the data provided was perfect.  You would have access to the same amount of data provided by the two above, however you have access to several images and more of a summary that could be useful. But by the time this project is finished, Google Base won’t be around.

Nestoria

I’ve looked into this service in the past, back then it the data was limited and outdated.  Looking at it today, it seems to be pulling a lot of data from Zoopla and Findaproperty.

The output of a property listing would look like the following:

{
            "auction_date" : null,
            "bathroom_number" : "3",
            "bedroom_number" : "4",
            "car_spaces" : null,
            "commission" : null,
            "construction_year" : null,
            "datasource_name" : "Zoopla!",
            "guid" : "g1-TNtcDN5QDO1MwN==",
            "img_height" : "120",
            "img_url" : "http://1.l.uk.nestoria.nestimg.com/1v9/f/1/1v9f1bc60ddaf7e6b9789f319305725226e77cc7d2.2.jpg",
            "img_width" : "160",
            "keywords" : "Leasehold, Mews, Porter",
            "latitude" : "51.51310",
            "lister_name" : "Winkworth",
            "lister_url" : "http://rd.nestoria.co.uk/rd?l=....",
            "listing_type" : "buy",
            "location_accuracy" : "9",
            "longitude" : "-0.13372",
            "price" : 2000000,
            "price_coldrent" : 0,
            "price_currency" : "GBP",
            "price_formatted" : "2,000,000 GBP",
            "price_high" : 2000000,
            "price_low" : 2000000,
            "price_type" : "fixed",
            "property_type" : "",
            "summary" : "Third floor flat in this very central Manhattan Lofts development in Dean...",
            "thumb_height" : "60",
            "thumb_url" : "http://3.l.uk.nestoria.nestimg.com/1v9/f/1/1v9f1bc60ddaf7e6b9789f319305725226e77cc7d2.1.jpg",
            "thumb_width" : "60",
            "title" : "Soho Lofts, Richmond Mews, Soho, W1",
            "updated_in_days" : 308.5,
            "updated_in_days_formatted" : "over a month ago"
         }

Looks perfect, has everything I could possibly need such as the latitude and longitude, price and a nice thumbnail/image.  But it’s not enough, there isn’t enough description/summary text and one image?

The purpose is to drag in the data set by estate agents as a base for the user to simply fine tune.  There needs to be more description/summary text. Sorry Nestoria, It’s not you.

Enter Zoopla

Reading the API documentation it seems the data provided by Nestoria is a mirror of that provided by Zoopla but with possibly more data fields provided by Nestoria for which I assume would be provided by other data set providers.

After obtaining an API key and looking at a few examples, there is sufficient data provided in terms of the description, bedrooms, bathrooms etc.  The only limit Zoopla has in place is the limit of images that are available.  However Zoopla seems to fit perfectly for what is required.

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