Zillow Dataset: Residential Agents Collect U.S. Real Estate Data

Why Residential Agents Have Become a Justification for Catching Zillow

Recently, a friend who is doing overseas real estate analysis complained to me that his IP was always blocked when he used a script to capture Zillow data, and he tried to adjust the request frequency and change the request header, but the result was still recognized as a robot. Later, he realized that the key lies in theBehavioral characteristics of IP addresses-Regular server room IPs are easily flagged by website wind control, while residential IPs look like real people browsing.

To cite a real case: their team used ordinary agents to capture 300 items per hour, sticking to less than 2 hours quasi-sealed. After switching to a residential agent, the same amount of collection can run steadily for more than 8 hours. The trick here is that Zillow and other real estate platforms will focus on monitoring three types of anomalies:

• High frequency access for short periods of time (e.g., 10 requests per second)
• Mismatch between IP geolocation and access content (e.g. European IPs checking US listings)
• Incomplete or unusually formatted request header information

Hands on with picking the right type of agent

Proxy IP on the market is divided into three categories, let's directly on the comparison table is more intuitive:

Tested.Dynamic Residential Proxy for ipipgoBest performance in Zillow acquisition scenarios. Their home IP pool covers all 50 states and automatically switches real residential IPs with each request, perfectly simulating the behavior of a real person viewing a home. The point is that they offertrial package, it is recommended that a novice run a small sample with a test volume first.

A guide to avoiding the pit: three practical tips

1. Geo-positioning should be to the right tasteFor example, to capture Los Angeles listings, the proxy IP must be from California. ipipgo's background can be directly selected state/city-level positioning, a feature that is particularly useful.

2. Humanize the rhythm of requests: Don't use fixed intervals, try random hibernation:

import random
import time

def random_delay().
    time.sleep(random.uniform(1.2, 3.5))

3. Exception handling can't be understated: Change your IP immediately when you encounter a 403 status code, and here's a retry template to share:

from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
from urllib3.util.retry import Retry

retry_strategy = Retry(
    total=3, status_forcelist=[403, 429], retry_strategy
    
    allowed_methods=["GET"]
)
adapter = HTTPAdapter(max_retries=retry_strategy)

QA Time: Frequently Asked Questions for Newbies

Q: Why do I still get blocked with a proxy IP?
A: 80% are using low quality proxies, check if the IP:
1. From a real home network (ASN information is available in the ipipgo backend)
2. Changing IPs with each request (dynamic proxies must have auto-rotation turned on)

Q: Residential agent prices are much different, how to choose?
A: Focus on three indicators:
- IP pool size (ipipgo currently has 9 million + residential IPs)
- Response time (measured under 800ms average in their house)
- Whether to support pay-per-volume (to avoid being kidnapped by packages)

Q: Is collecting property data considered illegal?
A: As long as the robots.txt rules are observed and no personal privacy information (such as landlord's phone number) is involved, it is legal to simply collect public listing information. It is recommended to control the collection frequency to avoid burdening the target website.

Say something from the heart.

Collecting data with proxy IPs is like playing hide-and-seek, with a focus on theIt's a natural disguise.I remember last year a customer had to use a free proxy, and it triggered the Zillow wind control. I remember last year a customer had to use a free proxy, the result triggered Zillow's wind control, the entire IP segment was permanently blacked out. Later changed to ipipgo's residential agent, with their intelligent rotation strategy, the average daily stable collection of 20,000 pieces of data.

One last word of advice: don't save money on proxy IPs. A good residential proxy should be like an invisibility cloak that protects your harvesting program without disturbing the target site. This is something that ipipgo does do professionally, especially with theirIP Survival MonitoringThe function can reject failed nodes in real time to ensure that the acquisition pipeline is not interrupted.