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In the UK we have open data which gives up to date information on house transactions. This includes the address of the home and the price it sold for. It includes detailed data on the type of property. It does not include names of those involved etc.

Is there any similar data open or otherwise for the US?

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  • i would be happy to know where i find such an open data in the UK ?
    – Elia besh
    Aug 16, 2018 at 13:01
  • @elia-besh Here you go: landregistry.data.gov.uk
    – OC2PS
    Nov 25, 2018 at 8:55
  • It seems there is no US housing Open Data available with all the details of the transactions, then?? While we have it in more and more countries in Europe.
    – MAT
    May 19, 2019 at 15:51
  • The US is a much larger area than most European countries. Many functions that are handled by the centralized national government in small countries, in the US are handled by lower levels of government (state, county and municipal). Thus there's no centralized national source of data for these functions. You might as well ask for a database of house sales for all of Europe.
    – csk
    May 23, 2019 at 17:44

5 Answers 5

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  • Historical graph of US new housing starts. It measures the building of new houses. Which isn't as telling as it used to be because in some cases, in some areas, it's cheaper to build a brand new house then fix up an old one.
  • Existing US home sales. Monthly graph and you can "stretch" the time span you want like the Google stock graphs.
  • And a search for more housing graphs at the Federal Reserve site. Free account, where you can create your own "dashboards" with a set of your own graphs. Fun!

NOTE: Some of the graphs above seem new as their data only goes back to 2015. But poke around, you will find something useful. The Federal Reserve has all kinds of graphs there about many aspects of the US economy and the historical graphs are really useful.

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Quandl has some free real estate data:

The Zillow database shows home prices and rents by size, type and tier, housing supply, demand and sales etc: https://www.quandl.com/data/ZILL

The National Association of Realtors database shows average and median home prices by area and dwelling type: https://www.quandl.com/data/NAR

The Freddie Mac database shows house price indexes for various American cities as well as historical mortgage rates: https://www.quandl.com/data/FMAC

Hope this helps! Disclosure: I work for Quandl.

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It's not exactly "open" data, but the largest nationwide database about houses is maintained by Zillow.

Their proprietary estimates of home prices are called "Zestimates."

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  • Zillow does not have transaction level data as the OP requested.
    – Mowzer
    May 20, 2019 at 7:51
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The analogous database in the U.S. is called the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). But there are two problems with using it as an open data source.

  1. It's decentralized. There is not one MLS. There are thousands. Each deals with a local area roughly the size of a city.

  2. It's private. The MLS is owned and operated by the local Realtor's association. Realtor's are a private association of licensed real estate agents and brokers responsible for conducting and regulating real estate transactions by their agents.

Lack of access to transaction level sales data is the reason Zillow's median error on its valuation estimates are currently still between four and five percent.

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