rental-housing-research

Rental housing and listing research

Access and contract

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your Crawlora key. Prefer the named Crawlora MCP tools when connected; otherwise use the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh, which sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Read reference/endpoints.md for exact tool names, methods, and parameters. Check application code as well as HTTP status; payloads are inside data. Stop on authentication errors, back off on 429, and retry a transient upstream failure once. Bound pages and calls by the requested scope and credit budget. Preserve source URLs, identifiers, and collection times.

Build a housing shortlist with location, unit, advertised-price, and source context. StreetEasy supplies NYC-area listings and market series; Greystar supplies its own communities in discovered markets. Keep their scopes distinct.

Discover geography and listing identity

• Establish location, budget/currency, dates where relevant, bedrooms, and explicit amenity/size needs. StreetEasy area IDs come from streeteasy_areas; Greystar market/country/state/city/neighborhood values come from greystar_markets. Their location IDs are unrelated. Do not infer resident demographics or neighbourhood suitability from directory content.
• Use StreetEasy rental search for monthly asks, and sales search only for a requested purchase comparison or market context. Repeat array query parameters for multiple area/amenity values. Follow returned unit/building identity into detail, rather than guessing a building from a similar street address.
• Greystar search returns communities; resolve its numeric property ID before property detail. A community's starting rent is not the price of a particular available unit. Price filters exclude communities without published prices, so an omitted community is not evidence of an absent local offer.
• For advertised apartments rather than community summaries, discover the accepted listing locations with greystar_unit_locations, then use greystar_units for available unit-level prices, floor plans, and lease terms. Its location slugs are separate from greystar_markets values, and results are grouped by community.
• StreetEasy market-data catalog discovers dataset and area/group choices. Match dataset, region, unit, frequency, period, and property type before comparing series. Asking-price/rent series differ from recorded sales and modelled indices; never merge those into one unlabeled trend. School/building metadata describes the source record, not guaranteed school admission or quality.
• Bound pages and retain listing IDs, addresses, unit numbers, source URLs, publication/update times when present, and collection time. Deduplicate cross-posts cautiously; two units in one building remain separate offers.

scripts/crawlora.sh /streeteasy/areas
scripts/crawlora.sh /streeteasy/market-data/catalog
scripts/crawlora.sh /greystar/markets
scripts/crawlora.sh /greystar/search query="New York" page=1 per_page=10
scripts/crawlora.sh /greystar/unit-locations query="austin"
scripts/crawlora.sh /greystar/units location="austin-tx" bedrooms=1 max_price=2500 page=1
# Use discovered area IDs and a user's budget, for example:
# scripts/crawlora.sh /streeteasy/rentals/search area_id="$AREA_ID" max_price="$BUDGET" page=1

Normalize and deliver

Keep gross monthly rent, net-effective rent, concessions, starting prices, unit-specific asks, deposits, mandatory fees, lease duration, and sale prices separate. Compute comparable totals only from returned/sourced terms and show unknown costs explicitly. Missing availability or price is unknown; a listing snapshot does not guarantee vacancy, eligibility, or an accepted application. Return a shortlist with price basis, verified location/unit identity, amenities, source/time, and questions that could change the ranking. For market change claims show comparable dated observations and coverage rather than turning a single listing sample into a citywide trend. Do not submit an application, contact landlords, book tours, or make payments from a research request.