Imagine having a constantly updated property database at your fingertips. With Browse AI and its prebuilt robots, you can extract property details and generate actionable insights effortlessly.
This step-by-step guide will show you how to create a property database using Browse AI’s workflows, scale the process, and set up monitors for real-time updates.
Why automate Zillow property data with Browse AI?
If you're a real estate investor or a data-driven professional, scraping and monitoring data from Zillow can:
- Save time and effort by replacing manual data collection with automation.
- Make informed decisions quickly using consistently updated, detailed property data.
- Scale effortlessly by automating large data extractions.
- Simplify workflows with integrations into tools like Google Sheets or Zapier.
What you'll need
Before automating Zillow property data extraction, ensure you have the following:
- A Browse AI account (it's free to get started!)
- Two prebuilt robots from Browse AI:
- Extract property details from Zillow – scrape details about a single property, like price, address, and features.
- Extract list properties from Zillow – extract data from a search query and extract links to individual property pages.
Step-by-step guide to deep scrape Zillow
Step 1: Setting up the Zillow "Extract list properties" scraper
In this first step, you'll generate a list of property URLs based on a search query. We'll be using this list in the second step to pull the connected property detail information.
- Go to Zillow and enter your desired property search query (for example, you could search for “homes for sale in Vancouver under $750,000”).
- Copy the search URL.
- Go to the Extract list properties from Zillow prebuilt robot.
- Input it into the "Extract list properties" robot.
- Set your parameters, ex: number of results.
- Run the robot to extract the data.
- Review the data and approve the robot.
- Name your robot (recommend: Robot A. Zillow property list).
Want to set up the robot to extract from multiple search URLs? Once you create this initial robot you can upload a list of up to 500,000 search URLs to scrape.
Step 2: Setting up the "Extract property details" robot
Now that you have a list of URLs based on a search query on Zillow.com, you'll create a robot to scrape the details on the property page.
- Go to the Extract property details from Zillow
- Input one property URL from the results of the first robot.
- Run the robot to extract comprehensive details like:
- Price and monthly costs.
- Property description.
- Facts and features like square footage or number of bedrooms.
- Listing details, date posted, and even saved/view count metrics.
- Review the data and approve the robot.
- Name your robot (recommend: Robot B. Zillow property details).
Step 3: Chaining robots with workflows
- Navigate to the Workflows in your Browse AI account.
- Create a new workflow to pass each property URL from Robot A to Robot B to extract the details:
- Robot A = Robot A. Zillow property list
- Robot B = Robot B. Zillow property details
- Configure the workflow based on when you want each dataset to update.
- Save the workflow and name the workflow.
- Go to Robot A and run the robot to trigger the workflow.
Once you run Robot A, this will trigger Robot B to pull all of the property details from the search URL(s) in Robot A.
Step 4: Set up a monitor to keep the data up to date and set up custom alerts
Now that you have a complete set up data, you'll likely want to keep it up to date, and monitor for changes. You can monitor for changes and updates to either robot (or both!).
- Go to the robot you'd like to monitor and click Monitor.
- Select Create new monitor.
- Configure the monitor based on:
- Frequency - determine how often the robot checks for changes (hourly, daily, weekly, or on a specific day)
- Limit - you can limit the amount of results the robot scrapes (ex: for Robot A how many properties from the search query does it generate)
- Email alerts - select to receive email alerts when things change.
Integrate your property database
Now that you've created a database of property data - you'll likely want to connect it to your own apps, tools, or workflows. Browse AI integrates with over 7,000+ apps and tools, including:
- CSV/JSON Export - download the data directly as a CSV or JSON file for offline analysis or importing into custom systems.
- Google Sheets - automatically populate and maintain your property data in a spreadsheet that updates in real-time.
- Airtable - sync your property database to create powerful visual databases with filtering and organization capabilities.
- Zapier - create workflows and automations by connecting your property data to thousands of other applications.
- Make.com - build complex automation scenarios with visual workflows that process your property data.
- Pabbly Connect - transform and route your property data through customizable automation pipelines.
- REST API - programmatically access your property data through our developer-friendly API endpoints.
- Webhooks - trigger actions in other systems whenever new property data is extracted.
Scaling the automation
Scaling your data scraping robots from Zillow is easy with Browse AI’s advanced features:
- Run multiple robots simultaneously: extract data from different Zillow search queries at the same time. This is ideal if you’re monitoring multiple regions or property types.
- Increase credit limits: upgrade to a paid plan to unlock additional credits. Paid plans start at $48.75 per month.
- Bulk run feature: upload a CSV file of multiple search URLs to Browse AI and run a bulk task for extracting data in one go. Scaling your setup ensures you can handle large amounts of data without additional manual effort.
- Managed services: if you're looking to develop a complex data-set that leverages multiple sources we offer managed services that extracts, transforms, and creates a customized database. This service starts at $7,999.
Automate your processes today
Streamlining your property research doesn’t have to be complicated. With Browse AI, you can automate Zillow property data extraction, scale your efforts, and stay ahead of the competition—all while focusing on making strategic investment decisions.
Get started today by signing up for free and trying out the prebuilt robots. Automate smarter, invest better.
