Realtor.ca API Wrapper and Scraper

Python wrapper and scraper for the Realtor.ca website. Use it to scrape Canadian real-estate listings easily.

Installation

Use the package manager pip to install the package requirements.

pip install git+https://github.com/harry-s-grewal/mls-real-estate-scraper-for-realtor.ca.git

Local Development

git clone https://github.com/harry-s-grewal/mls-real-estate-scraper-for-realtor.ca.git
python -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install -r ./mls-real-estate-scraper-for-realtor.ca/requirements.txt

Context

Realtor.ca has two API endpoints: PropertySearch_Post and PropertyDetails. Querying PropertySearch_Post will return a list of properties in a .json format, including some limited details. Querying PropertyDetails will provide detailed information on each property. Depending on what you're looking for, you can query one or the other, but be aware that getting details on each property is slow. That's because Realtor.ca is rate limited (boo). If you make too many queries too often, you'll receive an Error 403: Unauthorized error. It's not clear what the rate limit is, but waiting an hour or so between limits stops the freeze-out.

Usage

In queries.py you will find queries to Realtor.ca for both the PropertySearch_Post endpoint and the PropertyDetails endpoint. It also contains a query to get the coordinate bounding box of a city, as that's what Realtor.ca uses to determine which properties to list.

In realtorca.py there are two functions to automate the scraping of Realtor.ca.

get_property_list_by_city() will scrape a list of properties by city and save it as a .csv.

get_property_list_by_city("Calgary, AB")

Result:

CalgaryAB.csv

get_property_details_from_csv() will use that .csv file to get property listing details to enhance the data already available.

get_property_list_by_city("CalgaryAB.csv")

License

MIT License

Follows PEP8 Styleguide.