Apify Zillow API

Zillow Listings, as Rows You Can Query

Plain locations in, live Zillow listings out as structured rows, with the region resolved correctly for you so a ZIP never lands on the wrong town.

When to use this skill

• Someone wants a Zillow API and found only the official developer program, which is invite-only, unpriced, and gated behind a partner review.
• You are filling a CRM, a market dashboard, a valuation model, or a lead tool with for-sale, rental, or recently sold listings.
• You have a list of cities or ZIP codes and want listings back as JSON, not a page of search results to read by hand.
• You need latitude and longitude on every row so listings can be joined to a map or a geo dataset.

Not for: tracking homes whose price just dropped. Use the companion apify-zillow-price-cuts skill, built on the same Actor but shaped for price-drop monitoring. See references/actor-index.md.

What you get

One dataset row per listing. resultType separates forSale, rental, sold, and error rows, so a sale search that returns a sold row is still labeled honestly.

Core fields (for sale and sold):

• zpid, url, title, status, statusType
• price, priceValue, priceChange, priceChangeDate
• beds, baths, squareFeet, homeType
• street, city, state, zipcode, latitude, longitude
• brokerName, zestimate, rentZestimate, taxAssessedValue, soldDate, daysOnZillow
• thumbnail, images (URLs only, opt-in), scrapedAt

Rental rows are building-level, so they carry buildingName, minBaseRent, maxBaseRent, availableUnits, phone, amenityHighlight, and per-floorplan units, with lotId and providerListingId as identity in place of zpid.

Every row also carries the resolution provenance: searchLocation, regionId, regionName, regionType, regionAmbiguous, and regionAlternatives, so you can see exactly which Zillow region answered.

The Actor ships dataset views for the console: overview, priceCuts, rentals, sold, and map.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/zillow-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Actor ID: johnvc/zillow-api
• Pricing: pay per event, billed per listing returned. See the cost section below and references/gotchas.md for the live-price command.

Run it with the Apify CLI

Homes for sale in a city, capped at 10 while you look at the shape:

apify actors call "johnvc/zillow-api" -i '{"locations":["Austin, TX"],"statusType":"sale","maxResults":10}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Rentals by ZIP, with the building-level rental fields:

apify actors call "johnvc/zillow-api" -i '{"locations":["78704"],"statusType":"rent","maxResults":50}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Recently sold homes for comping (sold date, Zestimate, and assessed value, never a sale price):

apify actors call "johnvc/zillow-api" -i '{"locations":["Phoenix, AZ"],"statusType":"sold","maxResults":100}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Sweep a whole metro past the 820-result cap:

apify actors call "johnvc/zillow-api" -i '{"locations":["Dallas, TX"],"statusType":"sale","autoShard":true,"maxUpstreamCalls":40,"maxResults":2000}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Confirm the live schema and prices before a large batch:

apify actors info "johnvc/zillow-api" --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Read the rows back from a finished run:

apify datasets get-items <DATASET_ID> --format json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api \
  2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json (or --format json), --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-zillow-api, and 2>/dev/null.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/zillow-api

Then ask, for example: "Get homes for sale in Austin under 500000 with at least 3 beds, and return address, price, and the listing URL." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Start with one location and maxResults: 10. Look at the row shape before you pay for a wide pull.
2. Pass plain locations. "Austin, TX", "78704", "Travis County, TX", and "Texas" all resolve; a bare five-digit string resolves as a ZIP to the correct region, never as a pass-through that would return the wrong town.
3. Pick statusType: sale, rent, or sold. The row shape follows the listing, not the input, so branch on resultType.
4. Filter at the source. priceMin, priceMax, bedsMin, bathsMin, sqftMin, homeType, and the rest drop listings before they are billed.
5. Turn on autoShard only when you need more than 820 results for one location, and cap it with maxUpstreamCalls. Off by default so a run never surprises you with a large bill.
6. Dedupe on zpid for sale and sold rows; use lotId or providerListingId for rentals, which are building-level and often carry no zpid.
7. Keep latitude and longitude if you plan to map or join. They are on every row for that reason.

Inputs

• locations (array): plain city, ZIP, county, neighborhood, or state names, resolved automatically. Prefix a value with zip:, city:, county:, neighborhood:, msa:, or state: to force a type.
• statusType (enum sale, rent, sold, required)
• ambiguityPolicy (enum largest, error, all, default largest): how to resolve a name that maps to more than one region.
• regionId (string), mapBounds (string): advanced overrides; prefer locations.
• homeType, listingType, listingStatus (arrays)
• priceMin, priceMax, bedsMin, bedsMax, bathsMin, bathsMax, sqftMin, sqftMax, yearBuiltMin, yearBuiltMax (integers)
• priceReduction (boolean), tours (array), keywords (string), and the rest of Zillow's filter set.
• maxResults (integer, default 200): the primary spend cap.
• autoShard (boolean, default false), maxUpstreamCalls (integer, default 40): whole-metro sweeping and its ceiling.
• includeImages (boolean, default false): image URLs add many values per row; off by default.

Cost

Billing is pay per event: one listing_returned event per delivered listing row. Confirm live prices with the info command above rather than trusting a number copied here.

A search is billed for at least 10 listings, so a search that returns fewer, or none, still bills the 10-listing minimum for the page it fetched. Filtered-out listings that never reach the dataset are not billed. Keep maxResults low while exploring, and turn autoShard on deliberately, since each shard is its own page.

Suggested confirmation thresholds: mention the estimate under about $5, warn the user over about $5, get explicit confirmation over about $20. Present cost as "around $X", never as a guarantee.

Honest limits

• Sold rows carry no sale price. The source exposes only the sold date, the Zestimate, and the tax-assessed value for sold listings, so treat sold data as recently-sold context with an estimate, never as closed sale prices.
• Zestimate is an estimate. The Zestimate and rent Zestimate are Zillow's own estimates, not appraisals, and no field is a recommended rent.
• Images are URLs only. Photo fields pass through the source URL and are never downloaded, cached, or re-hosted.
• daysOnZillow resets when a listing is relisted, so it can understate how long a home has truly been on the market. Do not present it as listing age.
• One search is capped at 820 results. autoShard splits the map to exceed that; a point with more listings than a single tile can hold is marked truncated.
• Public listing data only. No agent contact details beyond the broker name shown on the listing, and nothing behind a login.

Troubleshooting

• Zero rows and no error row: your filters removed everything, or the location has little inventory for that statusType. Relax the filters or widen the location.
• An error row with regionAmbiguous: the name mapped to several regions. Set ambiguityPolicy to all, or qualify the location (add the state, or use a prefix).
• Wrong-city results: pass the town with its state, or use a city: or zip: prefix. The resolver never passes a raw ZIP straight through, so a mismatch is almost always an ambiguous name.
• A truncated row: the tile held more listings than one search returns. It is a completeness note, not an error.
• Errors are in-band dataset rows with resultType: "error"; pipelines should branch on resultType, not on run status.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related Actors

• Zoopla Property API: https://apify.com/johnvc/zoopla-property-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Realestate.com.au Property API: https://apify.com/johnvc/realestate-au-property-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Google Maps Places API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-places-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo