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Urban Studies & Planning: Real Estate & Housing

Real estate and Housing Data

Resource Geographic Levels Type Time Period Format Information
Zillow neighborhood to nation residential, rental 1996-present .csv
American Community Survey block group to nation residential, rental 2005-present varies by source
  • self-reported
  • includes information on condo fees, rent, housing value, property tax, insurance, mortgage & home equity loans
  • older data available via the decennial census
Assessor Parcel Data address/parcel residential, commercial varies by source varies by source
  • look for data in city and state data repositories or on city assessor sites
American Housing Survey metro area to nation residential 1973-present .csv
  • includes housing costs and characteristics
Building Permits Survey metro area to nation residential 1960-present .csv
  • includes information on number of permits issued in an area
  • city data repositories may have detailed information about all permits pulled
HUD datasets varies by source housing varies by source varies by source
  • a table of a variety of housing datasets for the US
HUD-eGIS Storefront varies by source housing varies by source varies by source
  • The HUD-eGIS Storefront provides a one-stop shop where users can search for and discover HUD's geospatial datasets, web-based mapping tools, and application programming interfaces (APIs). 

Search tips:

  • Looking for information on commercial real estate prices? Search for area reports from large real estate firms. Some will provide data tables or maps about specific neighborhoods.
  • Search for real estate programs in your area of interest. Many post data and reports published by the school.
  • Do you need more granular data and have funding? Companies such as CoreLogic sell customized real estate data.
  • It can be difficult to find address-level rental price information. Someone has pulled this information for Boston from padmapper. Click details to see the data and find a link to the code.

SNL Real Estate

New users will need to set up an account to access this database: 

  • On the database screen, click on New User Signup.
  • Select Market Intelligence New User Signup.
  • Use your MIT email to register.
  • Follow the link from email confirmation to set up a password.

If you don't see real estate information in the top menus, click on your name in the upper right and select User Profile & Display Information. Make sure real estate is selected in the Profile Specialization and the Industry focus. We also subscribe to the Energy modules so you'll have to switch the Profile back and forth if you use both.

This is an image of a web page that has a advanced search fields with a red arrow pointing to the Profile Specialization drop down menu. In the second column on the right another red arrow points to the Industry field that has the terms "Real Estate, Energy, and Utilities" selected.

Massachusetts data sources

Real estate reports

Click the Research or Reports links to access reports.