Which rent data to use? about housing-insights

[NealHumphrey]

@hansak11 you were working on this with Jeanne, right? Where does this stand? Do you guys have a recommendation yet for which dataset from zillow we should actually use?

[hansak11]

@NealHumphrey I did look into the zillow data earlier but haven't had a chance to look at it again since we were trying to work with Docker. Do you need this information soon? I can try to work on it this weekend and see if I find a good dataset to use.

[NealHumphrey]

No specific timeline, just want to get this integrated in the next few weeks. I was cleaning up all our tickets and this didn't have you as an assignee so I wanted to make sure you were still on it and it hadn't dropped off the radar. Thanks!

[hansak11]

Apologies, Neal! I ended up staying late at work and the red line was a mess today and hence could not join the work session. I still haven't had a chance to figure out which Zillow dataset will be useful. I should have some time this week to look into it but if someone else wants to take over this task, it might work better (if this is an emergency) I do not have the admin restrictions on my laptop anymore so I should be able to work with Docker.

[terrysky18]

I will take over this issue.

[domaley]

I'm really interested in this data @terrysky18, please let me know once this is pulled together. Also, if there's anything I can do to help, let me know.

[NealHumphrey]

@terrysky18 - We briefly talked about this, but the best first step on this is the bullet point on the 'geographical summary':

• Get the latest copy of all the Zillow Rent Index datasets (there is a separate dataset for each combination of apartment/building types).
• Calculate roughly how much of the city has data for each of the data sets. Some data sets only report a handful of neighborhoods, while others report all of them.
• Calculate how much that differs for past years (all the data sets have lower coverage in earlier years)

After you prepare that, maybe it makes sense to set down with @domaley and discuss any other considerations on which rent data to use / exclude or which caveats to display alongside the data?

[terrysky18]

@NealHumphrey, @domaley - acknowledged.

[terrysky18]

The meta.json file contains 'zillow_zrisqft_neighbor'. The Zillow rent index per square feet for all home file contains the most neighbourhoods in DC; other files only provide either a few neighbourhoods or none for Washington.

The Neighborhood_MedianRentalPrice_1Bedroom.csv file contains data for 10 DC neighbourhoods: Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Logan Circle, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, Mount Vernon Square, Forest Hills, Woodley Park, Navy Yard. Other median rental price files contain no data for DC at all.

The files for median rent price by postcodes contain similar amount of data. Zip for 1-bedroom file contains data for 10 postcodes. Zip for 2-bedroom file contains 6 postcodes. Files for more bedrooms do not have data for DC.

From data coverage stand point, zri-sqft files by neighbourhoods and postcodes provide the most amount of data; the file names are Neighborhood_ZriPerSqft_AllHomes.csv and Zip_ZriPerSqft_AllHomes.csv respectively. I will look into how a rent price can be derived from a rent index. Comments and suggestions please.

[terrysky18]

Other files that may be useful are Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv and Zip_Zri_AllHomes.csv.

Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv contains the same number of neighbourhoods as in zri-sqft, which is 92. It gives a monthly rent price for the whole neighbourhood.

Zip_Zri_AllHomes.csv gives the monthly rent price by postcode. However, the zri by postcode only contains 21 entries for DC.

We could use both Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv and Neighborhood_ZriPerSqft_AllHomes.csv. Rent index for all homes can provide a quick overview of a neighbourhood. Rent index per square feet can be used to calculate more precise rent estimate when room size in a specific neighbourhood is available.

[domaley]

Ideally we would like to be able to map the Zillow data onto the geographic units that are used by DC area policymakers - DC Wards and DC Neighborhood Clusters. This DC gov website has the info for the boundaries of DC wards and DC neighborhood clusters. ( https://www.neighborhoodinfodc.org/nclusters/nclusters.html). If there is a way to match up the data, that'd be great.

…

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 7:13 PM, Terry Song ***@***.***> wrote: Other files that may be useful are *Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv* and *Zip_Zri_AllHomes.csv*. *Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv* contains the same number of neighbourhoods as in zri-sqft, which is 92. It gives a monthly rent price for the whole neighbourhood. *Zip_Zri_AllHomes.csv* gives the monthly rent price by postcode. However, the zri by postcode only contains 21 entries for DC. We could use both *Neighborhood_Zri_AllHomes.csv* and *Neighborhood_ZriPerSqft_AllHomes.csv*. Rent index for all homes can provide a quick overview of a neighbourhood. Rent index per square feet can be used to calculate more precise rent estimate when room size in a specific neighbourhood is available. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#53 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ALmQAW_IePoadEX2W_44bU9O1cckeDsRks5r_KKegaJpZM4Lb_eo> .

[NealHumphrey]

@domaley That is something I've looked into some. This is the ticket related to calculating this, which is on hold: #148

We have the boundaries of the Zillow neighborhoods, which are different from any other boundaries we have. To roll them up we need some way of splitting a zillow neighborhood between two different neighborhood clusters, for example, when it crosses a border. I recommended using the Master Address Repository which could calculate the number of residential units within the overlapping zones and use that to make weighting factors.

We will probably delay this, because we have weighting factors to use for all our other data sources already...