Real Estate Intelligence - Market & Risk Analysis

Get US real estate market data, investment metrics, risk scores, and demographic breakdowns for any US city or state — sourced entirely from government APIs — at $0.05 per query, compared to CoStar's $3,000–$23,000 annual subscription.

What does Real Estate Intelligence do?

Real Estate Intelligence pulls authoritative data from US federal government APIs to produce structured market reports for any US location. It queries the FHFA House Price Index via the St. Louis Fed's FRED API, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 5-year), HUD Fair Market Rents, the FBI Crime Data Explorer, the EPA Air Quality System, USGS Earthquake Hazards, and FEMA's National Risk Index — then combines them into a single structured JSON record per query.

The Actor supports four analysis modes. Market Overview returns housing price index trends, median home value, median rent, owner/renter occupancy rates, price-to-rent ratio, and HUD Fair Market Rents by bedroom count. Investment Analysis derives appreciation rates, rental yield indicators, and market trend classification (hot, appreciating, stable, declining, buyer-favorable). Risk Assessment scores a location across crime, air quality, earthquake activity, and flood risk. Demographics returns population, income, and education statistics from Census ACS data.

All data sources are free public government APIs. No API keys are required beyond your Apify account. This makes the Actor a practical alternative for individual investors, real estate agents, and analysts who need market context without enterprise data subscriptions.

Key features

• FHFA House Price Index (FRED): quarterly state-level HPI with 1-year and 5-year change calculations, sourced from the St. Louis Fed
• Census ACS 5-year data: median home value, median gross rent, owner-occupied count, renter-occupied count, and occupancy percentages
• HUD Fair Market Rents: studio through 4-bedroom FMR averages across all counties in a state
• Price-to-rent ratio: calculated automatically from ACS median home value and median rent
• Market trend classification: categorizes markets as hot, appreciating, stable, declining, or buyer-favorable based on HPI change
• FBI Crime Data: violent and property crime counts, total crime rate per 100,000 population, and risk label (Low/Moderate/High)
• EPA Air Quality: PM2.5 or ozone AQI with Good/Moderate/Unhealthy classification
• USGS Earthquake data: recent seismic events within 200 km radius, with magnitude and risk label
• FEMA National Risk Index: flood risk classification with state-level fallback heuristics
• School and climate toggles: optionally include school quality metrics and climate risk data per run
• Composite risk score: 0–100 overall risk score averaged across crime rate, AQI, and earthquake magnitude components

Use cases

• Individual real estate investors: quickly evaluate a target market's appreciation history, crime risk, and rental yield potential before touring properties
• Buyers' agents: generate a data-backed market summary to present alongside property listings
• Rental property managers: compare Fair Market Rents across states to identify underpriced markets for portfolio expansion
• Financial analysts: batch-query multiple states for comparative housing market research without licensed data feeds
• Mortgage originators: assess market risk indicators (crime, flood, AQI) for underwriting context
• Proptech developers: embed government data into property search applications without managing API integrations per data source

How to use Real Estate Intelligence

1. Configure input — enter a US city, state, or ZIP code and select your analysis mode; provide the 2-letter state abbreviation for accurate government data lookups; optionally toggle school quality and climate risk data
2. Run the Actor — click "Start" in Apify Console or call via the Apify API
3. Get structured results — output is pushed to the Apify dataset as structured JSON

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
location	string	Yes	New York	US city, state, or ZIP code to analyze (e.g. Austin TX, 90210)
state	string	No	NY	2-letter US state abbreviation (e.g. CA, TX); improves accuracy of government data lookups
mode	string	No	market_overview	market_overview, investment_analysis, risk_assessment, or demographics
includeSchools	boolean	No	true	Fetch school district quality metrics from NCES and related sources
includeClimate	boolean	No	true	Include climate risk indicators: flood zones, drought risk, and extreme weather exposure

Output example

{
  "location": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "mode": "risk_assessment",
  "floodRisk": "High",
  "crimeRate": "3841/100k",
  "crime": {
    "totalCrimesReported": 924310,
    "violentCrimes": 94832,
    "propertyCrimes": 713204,
    "crimeRatePerCapita": 3841,
    "violentCrimeRate": 394,
    "propertyCrimeRate": 2965,
    "year": 2020,
    "riskLabel": "Moderate"
  },
  "airQuality": {
    "aqi": 42,
    "aqiLabel": "Good",
    "parameter": "PM2.5",
    "year": 2023
  },
  "earthquake": {
    "recentMagnitude": 2.8,
    "recentEventDate": "2024-11-03",
    "recentEventLocation": "8km NE of Snyder, Texas",
    "riskLabel": "Low"
  },
  "climateRisk": {
    "floodRisk": "High",
    "overallNriScore": null,
    "riskLabel": "High"
  },
  "overallRiskScore": 41,
  "overallRiskLabel": "Moderate",
  "sources": {
    "fbiCrime": true,
    "epaAirQuality": true,
    "usgsEarthquake": true,
    "femaNri": true
  },
  "timestamp": "2025-03-21T10:05:33.218Z"
}

Pricing

Each successful analysis costs $0.05 under Apify's pay-per-event model. You only pay when the analysis completes and data is pushed to the dataset. Queries for unsupported locations or API failures are not charged. Learn more about pay-per-event pricing.

API and integrations

Call this Actor via the Apify API, schedule recurring runs for market monitoring, or connect to Google Sheets or Airtable via Zapier or Make. Results are available as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Apify dataset.

Limitations

• All data is state-level, not city-level or ZIP-level; government APIs used here provide state aggregates rather than granular local statistics
• Crime data reflects FBI CDE estimates from 2020; more recent year-level data may not be available through the public API
• FEMA NRI state-level endpoint availability varies; the Actor uses a flood-risk heuristic as a fallback for states where the API returns no data