Property Data Guides & How-Tos

Practical, free guides to downloading, opening, and using U.S. property data.

• How to Download Property Data (CSV & Parquet)
  A step-by-step guide to downloading U.S. property data for free — the whole country or a single state, county or ZIP, as CSV or Parquet.
• Real Estate Data Sources: Free & Paid, Compared
  Where to get U.S. real estate data — free bulk datasets, self-serve APIs, enterprise providers, and MLS feeds compared, with the trade-offs of each.
• Parquet vs CSV for Property Data
  Should you download property data as Parquet or CSV? A plain comparison of the two formats — size, speed, history columns, and which tools open each.
• How to Get MLS Data (and the Gate Around It)
  MLS data is powerful but gated to licensed brokerages. Here's who can access it, why, and the open alternatives for everyone else.
• How to Get Real Estate Data: 5 Ways
  The five practical ways to get U.S. real estate data — and how to pick the right one based on what you're actually trying to do.
• How to Open a Parquet File (Python, pandas, DuckDB & More)
  Open and query a Parquet property-data file in one line — with pandas, DuckDB, Polars, R, or straight from the command line. No database required.
• Property Data for Real Estate Investors
  Free bulk U.S. property data for investors — sale prices, year built, lot size and listing status across every ZIP, as Parquet or CSV.
• Property Data for Researchers & Academics
  Free, CC0 U.S. property dataset for academic and policy research — 146M records with a documented schema, downloadable as Parquet or CSV.
• Property Data for Developers & Apps
  Property data for developers — bulk files to seed your database plus a live API where every dataset row is an endpoint. Free to start, CC0 files.
• Property Data for Journalists & Newsrooms
  Free property data for data journalism — sale prices, year built, and property types across the U.S., as spreadsheet-ready CSV or analysis-ready Parquet.
• Property Data for GIS & Mapping
  Property data with coordinates for GIS and mapping — latitude/longitude on every record, plus parcel APN and county FIPS, downloadable free as Parquet or CSV.
• Property Tax History: How to Find It
  How to find a property's tax history — what assessed value and annual tax mean, and how to pull past years for any U.S. home from a free dataset (nested tax history in Parquet).
• How to Export Property Data to Excel (or Google Sheets)
  How to get property data into Excel or Google Sheets — download the CSV for any U.S. state, county, or ZIP and open it directly, no coding required.
• How to Look Up a Property by Parcel Number (APN)
  How to find a property by its Assessor Parcel Number (APN) — what an APN is, why it needs the county FIPS to be unique nationally, and how to search the dataset by parcel.
• Zillow API Alternative: Free Property Data (2026)
  Zillow retired its public API in 2021. Here's the open alternative — 146M U.S. property records free to download (CC0), plus a self-serve API where every record is a live endpoint.
• RentCast Alternative: Free Bulk Property Data
  A RentCast alternative for teams that want bulk property data they can own and redistribute — 146M U.S. records free under CC0, plus a self-serve API.
• ATTOM Data Alternative: Free & Self-Serve Property Data
  An ATTOM Data alternative that's self-serve and free to start — bulk CC0 property files plus a live API, with no sales process.
• HouseCanary Alternative: Open Property Data
  A HouseCanary alternative for property facts and history — free bulk CC0 files plus a self-serve API, without an enterprise agreement.
• Free Property Data APIs & Datasets Compared (2026)
  The free ways to get U.S. property data in 2026 — bulk datasets vs. metered APIs vs. county records — compared on coverage, cost, license, and how you access them.