Zillow Group is inviting hackers, coders, designers and engineers to dream up new real estate software at an all-night “hackathon” at its San Francisco offices, Nov. 6 through 8.
At the event, dubbed “zip.code,” developers will have access to real estate data from MLSs and data companies — covering over 3,000 U.S. counties — powered by Zillow Group subsidiary Retsly. Zillow acquired the Vancouver-based firm, which aims to standardize real estate data, in July 2014.
The three-day event will culminate in demos open to the public and $25,000 in prize money, split among six winners (see below). Zillow Group has room for 300 participants.
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“We’re excited this event will begin to explore what’s possible when you connect the brightest developers with high-quality real estate data directly from MLS and public records,” said Errol Samuelson, Zillow Group chief industry development officer, in a statement.
Judges will select four winners in two categories: two that best used Retsly’s listing data application programming interface (API); and two that best used the firm’s public data API. The winners in each category will get $5,500, and the runners-up will get $3,000.
Attendees will vote for the remaining two winners. The winner will get $5,000; the runner-up, $3,000.
Zillow Group is donating all proceeds to charity.
Zillow hosted its first hackathon in February, when it invited developers to its Seattle headquarters for “Hack Housing: Empowering Smarter Decisions.” Participants competed for $10,000 in prize money for devising solutions that help homebuyers find information about government housing programs.
Retsly’s not a hackathon newbie, either. It partnered with Realogy for a November 2013 event attended by over 150 developers. On-demand showing platform Curb Call was a runner-up at that event.