Cook County Residential Characteristics Scraper

Cook County Residential Characteristics Scraper — Home Features and Building Data

Collect residential property characteristics from the Cook County Assessor's public open data portal. Retrieve building details such as bedrooms, bathrooms, building square footage, construction quality, year built, and property identifiers. Filter records, explore dataset metadata, and export structured results as JSON, CSV, Excel, and other supported formats.

Overview

This actor collects records from the Cook County Assessor's Single and Multi-Family Improvement Characteristics dataset.

It supports full dataset collection, filtered searches, and dataset metadata retrieval. Use it to organize residential building characteristics into an Apify dataset for property research, real estate analysis, and comparable property studies.

Features

• Collect Cook County residential building characteristics.
• Retrieve property identifiers and assessment years.
• Extract bedrooms, rooms, and bathroom counts.
• Collect building and land square footage.
• Retrieve year-built and residential building type information.
• Extract construction quality and other building features.
• Filter records using custom conditions.
• Retrieve dataset column names, types, and descriptions.
• Export results in JSON, CSV, Excel, and other supported formats.

Collection Modes

All Rows

Collects residential characteristic records from the dataset, up to the configured item limit.

Filtered Rows

Collects records matching supplied filter conditions. Use this mode to narrow results by tax year or other available dataset fields.

Dataset Metadata

Retrieves information about the dataset's columns, including their names, types, and descriptions.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	String	Collection mode: rows, filtered, or metadata.
maxItems	Integer	Maximum number of records to collect.
orderBy	String	Field or expression used to order collected records.
where	String	Optional filter condition for the filtered mode.
requestDelaySecs	Number	Delay between collection requests in seconds.

Example Input

Collect residential characteristics

{
  "mode": "rows",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "orderBy": ":id",
  "requestDelaySecs": 1
}

Filter by tax year

{
  "mode": "filtered",
  "where": "year='2024'",
  "maxItems": 25,
  "requestDelaySecs": 1
}

What Data Does This Actor Extract?

Field	Description
pin	Property identification number.
year	Assessment or record year.
card	Property card identifier.
class	Property classification code.
township_code	Township code.
tieback_proration_rate	Tieback proration rate.
card_proration_rate	Card proration rate.
cdu	Property condition, desirability, and utility code.
pin_is_multicard	Indicates whether the property has multiple cards.
pin_num_cards	Number of property cards.
pin_is_multiland	Indicates whether the property has multiple land records.
pin_num_landlines	Number of land lines.
char_yrblt	Year the building was constructed.
char_bldg_sf	Building area in square feet.
char_land_sf	Land area in square feet.
char_beds	Number of bedrooms.
char_rooms	Number of rooms.
char_fbath	Number of full bathrooms.
char_hbath	Number of half bathrooms.
char_frpl	Fireplace count.
char_type_resd	Residential building type.
char_cnst_qlty	Construction quality description.
char_attic_fnsh	Attic finish description.
char_gar1_att	Garage attachment information.
char_gar1_area	Garage area information.
char_gar1_size	Garage size or capacity.
scraped_at	Date and time when the record was collected.

Note: Some characteristics may be missing or vary between records.

Example Output

{
  "pin": "01011000040000",
  "year": "2026.0",
  "card": "1.0",
  "class": "205",
  "township_code": "10",
  "tieback_proration_rate": "1.0",
  "card_proration_rate": "0.0",
  "cdu": "AV",
  "pin_is_multicard": false,
  "pin_num_cards": "1.0",
  "pin_is_multiland": false,
  "pin_num_landlines": "1.0",
  "char_yrblt": "1881.0",
  "char_bldg_sf": "1573.0",
  "char_land_sf": "11055.0",
  "char_beds": "2.0",
  "char_rooms": "5.0",
  "char_fbath": "1.0",
  "char_hbath": "1.0",
  "char_frpl": "0.0",
  "char_type_resd": "2 Story",
  "char_cnst_qlty": "Average",
  "char_attic_fnsh": "None",
  "char_gar1_att": "No",
  "char_gar1_area": "No",
  "char_gar1_size": "2 cars",
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-26T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Use Cases

• Property Research: Explore residential property characteristics across Cook County.
• Real Estate Comparisons: Compare building sizes, bedroom counts, bathroom counts, and other property features.
• Property Valuation Research: Combine building characteristics with other property information for analysis.
• Market Analysis: Study residential building characteristics across different tax years.
• Data Management: Build structured property datasets for spreadsheets, databases, and internal tools.
• Real Estate Analytics: Use collected records in dashboards, reports, and research workflows.

Working with Your Dataset

After the actor completes a run:

1. Open the actor's Dataset tab.
2. Review the collected residential property records.
3. Export the results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or another supported format.
4. Use the exported data for property research, comparisons, and analysis.

FAQ

Who is this actor for?

It is useful for real estate professionals, property researchers, analysts, and developers who need structured Cook County residential building characteristics.

Can I filter records by tax year?

Yes. Use filtered mode with a condition matching the year field, such as year='2024'.

What property characteristics are available?

Records can include bedrooms, bathrooms, rooms, building square footage, land square footage, year built, construction quality, and garage information.

Can I collect the entire dataset?

You can collect records up to the configured maxItems limit. Larger collections may require multiple runs.

Can I run it on a schedule?

Yes. Configure an Apify Schedule to refresh the dataset automatically at your preferred interval.

Can I export the collected records?

Yes. Apify supports JSON, CSV, Excel, and other dataset export formats.

Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or officially associated with the Cook County Assessor's Office or Cook County. It collects publicly available information. Users are responsible for how they use, store, and redistribute collected data.

Is Web Scraping Legal?

Collecting information that is already public is generally legal. There is no single law that bans all forms of web scraping. The limits are the usual ones: do not break into accounts, do not take private or confidential data, and be careful with personal data and copyrighted works. A site's terms can also restrict how you access it. Facts such as a public name, price, or rating are not the same thing as republishing someone's article or photo.

This actor collects information from public pages. It does not log in and it does not bypass access controls.

For a longer explanation, see Apify's article Is web scraping legal?.