A Hackathon, sponsored by Zillow, with a top $10,000 reward for the team who could power solutions that assist first-time homebuyers, low-income renters and senior citizens to find a home that meets their needs. Such was the inspiration and the impetus for over 400 developers who took part in an idea and data-potent marathon this weekend.
“We’re opening Zillow Tower in downtown Seattle for the weekend to develop products and create solutions to aid home buyers and renters with particular needs,” read the invitation. Deep housing data is more accessible than ever thanks to companies like Zillow and federal open data efforts. But this wealth of information remains fragmented across a number of dense .gov websites and can be confusing even for the experts.
As part of the event, participants were given access to newly released government data sets on topics like federal housing programs, apartment buildings with accessory dwelling units and transit information. In addition, Zillow made available its data on home values and rents.
To inaugurate the event, opening remarks were given by Zillow chairman and co-founder Rich Barton and former U.S. Deputy CTO Nick Sinai.
Barton can credit open government data as his own inspiration for the conception of Zillow, stating”The algorithm for the Zestimate, which is the estimate of value that we place on every home in the country, was written long ago by Stan Humphries. He was able to write that because we had access to public data,and what people paid for a home and the tax assessment of that home was deemed to be public information,” Barton said. “We are going to open all of this information up because when we shine sunshine into dark corners, all the nasties crawl out. All the mold dries up because we the people can see the data. It was really that opening up of government data that gave us the idea for Zillow.” Humphries is now the author of a new best-selling book using housing data to bust several real estate myths.
Sinai was enthusiastic: “I can say, from the federal government’s perspective, there’s really some exciting things happening with the focus on digital services. Healthcare.gov was an important learning lesson and catalyst. You see with the foundation of the U.S. Digital Service, new digital service teams at the VA and other places, the rise of 18F. You really see this push for user-focused digital services. Part of that is open data and part of that is APIs. I hope that we see more read-write APIs so that you can actually see ecosystems, much the same way that TurboTax lets you securely send your information to the IRS. You can imagine more secure ecosystems of companies building all kinds of customizations and securely transacting with the federal government.”
The event was hosted in partnership with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and with the participation of the federal government. The Hackpad for the proceedings can be viewed online. [24×7]
