Houzz Lead Scraper & Contact Enrichment Actor

Lightweight, high-speed Houzz professional scraper built with Python, Requests, BeautifulSoup, and the Apify SDK.

Extract deeply enriched Houzz business leads—including company websites, social media profiles, performance metrics, and verified contact emails—without the high execution cost of heavy browser-based automation.

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🚀 Why Choose This Actor?

Most Houzz scrapers on the market rely on full browser automation (like Playwright, Selenium, or Puppeteer). These frameworks consume vast amounts of RAM and CPU, burning through your Apify cloud usage credits instantly.

This Actor uses a highly optimized Requests + BeautifulSoup architecture.

Key Benefits:

• Ultra-Low Memory Footprint: Runs efficiently on lower memory limits without triggering Out-Of-Memory (OOM) failures.
• Maximum Cost Savings: Reduces compute runtime costs significantly, maximizing your B2B lead list ROI.
• Dynamic Search Resolution: Powered by an intelligent internal taxonomy.json mapping engine. You don't need complex URLs—simply pass a plain-English query, and the scraper automatically resolves the target directory.
• CRM-Ready Architecture: Output datasets format instantly into beautifully organized columns for spreadsheet applications, cold email tools, and CRMs.

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🎯 Ideal For

• B2B Lead Generation: Instantly build rich prospects lists from specific local business industries.
• Marketing & SaaS Agencies: Uncover high-value targets across architecture, remodeling, interior design, and contracting spaces.
• Sales Prospecting Teams: Feed your cold outbound email sequencers and telemarketing teams with verified phone numbers and direct addresses.
• CRM Data Enrichment: Clean, update, or expand existing lists with fresh social, geographic, and domain-linked signals.

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🔥 Features

1. Multi-Mode Search Resolution

Never fight with hidden Houzz redirect parameters or location hashes again. The Actor processes input configurations sequentially across three execution fallback levels:

• Direct URLs: Pass an active Houzz search query or filtered professionals page directory URL directly.
• Plain-English Parsing: Type simple search phrases like architects in Texas or kitchen remodelers in Miami. The engine parses keywords dynamically.
• Granular Taxonomy Selectors: Provide strict category and location parameters to automatically construct exact database targets.

2. High-Signal Profile Extraction

Visits Houzz profile pages securely to pull structured contractor listings, capturing:

• Company / professional name & biography title
• Business location coordinates
• Verified telephone numbers
• Direct company website domain links
• Average rating scores & individual review counts
• Historical project volumes
• Declared business services provided
• Verbatim Houzz profile URL sources
• Associated social media profiles (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X)

3. Smart Contact Email Enrichment

When extractEmails is enabled, the Actor launches background asynchronous workers to scan the discovered corporate domain. To maximize speed and avoid scraper detection footprints, it targets a minimal, high-value page stack:

• Home Landings
• /contact & /contact-us
• /about & /about-us

The Parsing Advantage: The extraction filter strips away false-positive matches (like image file links, template script names, or static CDNs) while gracefully resolving advanced obfuscations, inline mailto: anchors, and Cloudflare Email Protection structures.

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💰 Pricing & Scale Rules

This Actor operates under a consumption-friendly pay-per-result architecture.

• Standard executions mapping profile databases, target properties, and basic social media footprints are billed at an aggressive baseline rate of $3.99 per 1,000 successful leads.
• Run Safeguards: To balance cloud platform limits seamlessly, the maximum ceiling limit per run is safely fixed at $3.00. This built-in throttle typically extracts between 500 to 750 completely enriched records per run before stopping gracefully.

Note: Realized run metrics may vary based on structural network routes, external target block behaviors, and your chosen proxy tiering settings.

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🛠️ Input Parameters & Schema

Input Parameter	Data Type	Default	Operational Description
startUrl	String	Optional	Direct Houzz search/results directory link. Takes immediate structural priority.
searchQuery	String	Optional	Plain-English command phrases. Examples: architects in Austin TX, interior designers near Chicago.
category	String	Optional	Strict target professional niche mapping keyword (e.g., interior designer, general contractor).
location	String	Optional	Geolocation filter bounding region (e.g., Miami FL, Dallas TX).
maxResults	Integer	10	Maximum quantitative cutoff profile objects pushed to output dataset.
maxPages	Integer	3	Maximum pagination directory pages inspected during matching.
extractEmails	Boolean	false	Toggles external domain-level target lookup background scans.
enrichmentWorkers	Integer	10	Parallel thread workers allocated to scrape target business websites.
proxyConfiguration	Object	Optional	Official Apify proxy management profile controls.

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📊 Input Configuration Examples

Example 1: Plain-English Query Search (Recommended)

{
  "searchQuery": "architects in Austin TX",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "maxPages": 3,
  "extractEmails": true,
  "enrichmentWorkers": 5
}

Example 2: Target Taxonomy Formats

{
  "category": "interior designer",
  "location": "Miami FL",
  "maxResults": 25,
  "maxPages": 2,
  "extractEmails": false
}

Example 3: Direct URL Overrides

{
  "startUrl": "[https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/probr0-bo~t_11784?l=Austin,%20TX](https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/probr0-bo~t_11784?l=Austin,%20TX)",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "maxPages": 1,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

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🌐 Proxy Configuration

Proxy usage within the runtime container framework is completely optional.

• Small Runs: Baseline micro-scraping parameters can run comfortably without enabling proxy rotation features.
• Enterprise Custom Runs: For extensive multi-city extraction processes or high-density target scraping schedules, seamlessly toggle Residential, Datacenter, or Custom proxy pools directly through the integrated Apify proxy configuration dashboard wrapper. Proxies route uniformly across all Houzz page indexing sweeps and target email searches.

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📦 Output Dataset Structure

Results deliver clean JSON objects parsed directly to your Apify platform storage buckets:

{
  "name": "Atelier 616 Architecture",
  "location": "Austin, TX",
  "phone": "(555) 123-4567",
  "website": "[https://examplearchitecture.com](https://examplearchitecture.com)",
  "rating": 5.0,
  "review_count": 24,
  "project_count": 83,
  "services": "Architectural Design, Space Planning, Custom Homes",
  "email": "alexa@examplearchitecture.com",
  "emails": ["alexa@examplearchitecture.com", "info@examplearchitecture.com"],
  "emails_csv": "alexa@examplearchitecture.com, info@examplearchitecture.com",
  "socials": {
    "linkedin": "[https://linkedin.com/company/example](https://linkedin.com/company/example)",
    "instagram": "[https://www.instagram.com/example](https://www.instagram.com/example)",
    "facebook": null,
    "twitter": null
  },
  "profile_url": "[https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/example-studio-probr0-bo~t_11784](https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/example-studio-probr0-bo~t_11784)"
}

Note: Any individual field property value natively missing from a professional's verified Houzz ledger returns as a clean null or an empty array.

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📂 Core Taxonomy Mechanics

The Actor uses an internal taxonomy.json mapping database to normalize search terms before reaching out to Houzz endpoints. This allows singular, plural, and semantic match variations to map to real Houzz directory categories effortlessly.

{
  "architect": {
    "slug": "architect",
    "taxonomy_id": "11784",
    "name": "Architects & Building Designers",
    "aliases": ["architects", "architecture firm", "building designers"]
  }
}

This data converts user inputs seamlessly to active structured target routing endpoints matching standard URL formatting rules: https://www.houzz.com/professionals/[slug]/probr0-bo~t_[taxonomy_id]?l=[location]

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💻 Local Development & Standalone Testing

The design isolates core BeautifulSoup application tracking mechanisms securely away from Apify container elements, enabling simple local execution profiling.

Environment Setup

# Initialize and activate Python virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use: .\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

# Install requirements
pip install -r requirements.txt

Standalone Stand-In Execution

Run the standalone implementation module directly from source file coordinates:

$python src/main.py

Testing with Script Runtime Environment Flags

export HOUZZ_START_URL="[https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/probr0-bo~t_11784?l=Austin,%20TX](https://www.houzz.com/professionals/architect/probr0-bo~t_11784?l=Austin,%20TX)"
export MAX_RESULTS=10
export MAX_PAGES=2
export EXTRACT_EMAILS=true

python src/main.py

Local test processes safely store output files straight to a localized text file target directory array named houzz_results.json.

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📋 Technical Limitations & Notes

• Dynamic JavaScript Emails: This scraper uses an optimized HTTP client routing flow rather than heavy browser emulation. If a target business website strictly uses advanced client-side framework scripts to dynamically compute display emails after the page loads, it may be bypassed by requests-based processing.
• Taxonomy Additions: You can expand recognized target criteria and vocabulary matching variations dynamically by adding customized search alias keywords directly inside your root directory's taxonomy.json file.

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⚖️ Disclaimer

This Actor is engineered solely for research data analytics, standard data aggregation, and compliant market research verification pipelines. Users assume full, exclusive operational responsibility to respect all targeted website Terms of Service structures and applicable data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM) within their operating local jurisdictions.