Rent Data API - Rent Estimates, Comps, Market Rent Stats

Get a defensible rent estimate for any US address - mean, median and nine percentiles with the sample it rests on - plus every comparable listing behind it, the rent history at the exact address, and the market statistics and government data that put a single number in context.

What this actor does

• Rent estimates with the whole distribution, not one number. Mean, median, minimum, maximum and the 5th, 10th, 20th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 80th, 90th and 95th percentiles, with the sample standard deviation, the number of comparable listings behind them, and the search radius actually used. A thin market gets a wider radius automatically, and the row says so, so you can tell a tight estimate from a stretched one.
• The comparable listings behind the estimate. One row per nearby rental with its address, coordinates, distance, advertised rent, square footage, rent per square foot, bedrooms, bathrooms, property type and the date it was last seen.
• Outlier flags that reconcile the two. The provider runs a Grubbs test over the comps and excludes the outliers from the statistics, but still returns them in the list. Every comp row carries that flag, so your own average can be made to match the published median instead of quietly disagreeing with it.
• Rent history at an exact address. Listings actually advertised at one address, with the mean staleness of the records, rather than the area around it.
• Batch up to 1,000 addresses in one job. Submitted asynchronously and polled to completion, with per-address status so an address with too little data is reported as such rather than silently missing.
• Bounded market statistics. Rent breakdowns by bedroom count and by property type for a metro, city, county, ZIP, neighborhood or school district, with the areas that contain any address you look up.
• Census, HUD and labor market data on the same row. American Community Survey demographics, HUD fair market rents, HUD housing affordability, local unemployment, industry employment and wages, building permits, and school district enrolment and per-pupil spending.
• Rank and screen markets. Order every metro, county or ZIP by one metric, or find the areas where several metrics all land inside your ranges at once.
• Pay per result. You are charged for rows carrying a real record. Addresses the provider cannot geocode and areas too thin to analyse are free.

Bring your own key

This actor calls the provider with your own API key, generated in the API settings of your account. Paste it into the API key field, or set it as the DATA_API_KEY secret. Nothing runs on anyone else's credentials, and a run without a key ends cleanly with an explanation rather than failing.

API access needs an active Pro subscription with API access switched on. A pasted Bearer prefix is stripped, so copying the whole header line instead of the key still works.

Three wallets, and four free endpoints

The provider bills three separate balances - quickview, premium and pro report - and each endpoint draws on exactly one. An estimate spends a quickview credit; comps and address rents spend a premium credit. So a refusal for lack of credit on one mode says nothing about the others, and this actor names the balance that ran out rather than reporting a generic payment error.

Four things cost nothing: area search, metric catalogue, account and the rate limit check. Use them first. Resolve your place names to area slugs for free, read the metric catalogue to see which metrics your account is actually entitled to, then spend credits only on the questions that will answer.

An address search and an area search are different questions

Setting an area slug does not narrow an address search - it replaces it. The provider then ignores the address, the coordinates and the bedroom count, and answers with unfiltered numbers for the whole area. That is often exactly what you want, and it is a bad surprise when it is not, so this actor refuses to send both and every row carries a searchKind and an isWholeAreaResult flag saying which question was actually asked.

Example output

{
  "recordType": "rentSummary",
  "requested": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
  "searchKind": "address",
  "isWholeAreaResult": false,
  "found": true,
  "address": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500",
  "latitude": 38.897675,
  "longitude": -77.036547,
  "bedrooms": 2,
  "baths": "1.5 or more",
  "buildingType": "apartment",
  "lookBackDays": 365,
  "radiusMiles": 1.4,
  "meanRent": 3184,
  "medianRent": 3095,
  "minRent": 1950,
  "maxRent": 5400,
  "percentile25": 2695,
  "percentile50": 3095,
  "percentile75": 3600,
  "percentile90": 4250,
  "standardDeviation": 682.4,
  "sampleCount": 148,
  "containingAreas": ["zcta:20500-dc", "city:washington-dc", "metro:washington-arlington-alexandria-dc-va-md-wv"],
  "searchToken": "a1b2c3d4e5f6",
  "quickviewCreditsRemaining": 4812
}

FAQ

What data does this rent estimate API return for an address?

For one address it returns the mean, median, minimum and maximum rent plus nine percentiles from the 5th to the 95th, the sample standard deviation, the number of comparable listings the statistics rest on, the radius searched, the geocoded address and coordinates, and the state, metro, county, ZIP and neighborhood areas that contain it. Add the comps mode and you also get every individual listing behind that estimate.

How do I get rent comps for a property?

Run rent comps mode with the address. It prices the address first and then reuses the search token the provider hands back to fetch the listings behind that price, which is the provider's own recommended path and avoids paying to geocode the same address twice. Each comp row carries the address, distance, advertised rent, square footage, rent per square foot, bedrooms, bathrooms, property type and last-seen date.

Why does my own average of the comps not match the published median?

Because they are not the same set. The provider tests the comps for statistical outliers and excludes the flagged ones from the mean, median and percentiles, while still returning them in the list so you can see what was thrown out. Filter on isStatisticalOutlier being false before averaging and the two agree.

What is the difference between rent summary, rent comps and address rents?

Rent summary is the aggregate rent for the area around an address. Rent comps is the individual listings that aggregate is built from. Address rents is the listing history recorded at that one exact address - a different question, and one most addresses have no answer to, because most properties are not individually tracked. When address rents comes back empty, rent summary is the mode that will answer.

How do I find a market's area slug?

Run area search with a place name such as hyde park cincinnati or Austin TX, or with a census FIPS, GEOID or ZCTA code. It returns every matching area with its slug, its area type, the number of listings backing it, its land area and its listing density. It costs no credits, so resolve your whole list before spending anything.

Which markets have the highest rents, incomes or lowest property taxes?

Use rankings for one metric - acs.median_household_income across every metro, say - or screener to find the areas where up to six metrics all sit inside your ranges at once. Write a constraint as acs.median_household_income 75000-125000, acs.effective_property_tax_rate_pct <= 0.75 or acs.median_gross_rent >= 1200. A range typed backwards is corrected rather than sent, because the provider answers a backwards range with an empty result and no explanation.

Why did a ranking come back refused rather than empty?

There are two different refusals and they need different fixes. A 403 means your account is not entitled to that metric family, which is a conversation with the provider. A 422 means the metric exists but is not published for the kind of area you asked for, which is fixed by changing the area type. Run metric catalogue first: it is free and every metric comes back with an entitled flag and the list of area types it covers.

What government data comes with an area?

American Community Survey demographics, HUD fair market rents by bedroom count, HUD housing affordability, local unemployment from BLS LAUS, industry employment and wages from BLS QCEW, Census building permits, and for school districts, NCES enrolment and per-pupil finance. Whether each arrives depends on your account's access, and a source you cannot see is omitted with no marker at all - so an absent source means no data or no access and never zero. Every area row lists the sources that actually arrived.

Why does a fact for a ZIP code say it came from a county?

Because the provider falls back to the narrowest containing area that publishes the fact. Not every statistic exists at every level. Every fact row carries the source level and the slug of the area the number came from, so a county figure standing in for a ZIP is visible rather than assumed.

How many addresses can I price at once?

Up to 1,000 per batch job. The batch is queued, and this actor polls it to completion and emits one row per address, with an explicit status for addresses that could not be geocoded or had too few comparable listings. The provider checks your wallet covers the whole batch before accepting it, so a batch is either fully accepted or not charged at all.

What does it cost?

Pricing is per result. You pay for rows that carry a real record: an estimate, a comp, a listing, a matched area, an area bundle, a government fact, a ranked area or a catalogue metric. Addresses the provider cannot geocode, areas with too few listings, and place names that match nothing are all free. Apify platform usage is included in the per-result price.

Does the actor fail if my key is wrong?

No. A missing key, a refused key, an empty credit balance and an input that needs filling in all end the run cleanly with the reason as the run's status message. Only a real fault - a provider outage, or a bug here - fails a run.

Keyword map

rent estimate API, rent data API, rental comps API, rent comps API, fair market rent API, median rent by ZIP code, average rent by city API, rental market data API, rent per square foot data, US rental listings data, rent percentile data, apartment rent estimate API, house rent estimate API, rent history by address, ACS demographics API, HUD fair market rent data, BLS unemployment by metro, market screener API, rental market rankings, real estate underwriting data.