I'm the OP. Thanks, everyone, for you advice. I realize that Greatschools/walkscore are flawed, but searching by these criteria would eliminate certain places (say, with a walkscore below 30, and a greatschools below 4) that are hard to suss out otherwise.

Anonymous wrote:In my never ending search for housing, I'm continually frustrated by the fact that I can't search by the two criteria I care about—walkscore, and school rankings.

Does anyone know if any of the major real estate site (Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc.) have plans to let you search by either of these criteria. While the rankings aren't perfect, they would help me eliminate a lot of places, and perhaps alerts me to areas I'm not familiar with.

As a programmer, most APIs I've seen make you agree not to store their data in your own database. So you might never see this capability. If you do, it may be a separately negotiated agreement, or illegal.

My nabe had a low / average walk score on Zillow, but I can walk everywhere: work, grocery store, restaurants, schools.

Walkability was critical when I was searching, and where I live is extremely walkable. The walkscore for the neighborhood only comes in at 80, though -- because it scores the entire zipcode. The specific spot that I live in is far more walkable than the neighborhood as a whole.

So--bottom line--walkscore may not give you as much detailed info as you need.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Best site I've seen is WWW.NICHE.COM. use best data.

lol, that site blows results are self reported

Remember when they released some stupid survey that declared ARlington had like 17 of the 20 best schools in Virginia? Crazy.

OP, there are a couple of flaws in your thinking. The first is that Great Schools is some reliable arbiter of school quality. It's not. No one really consults it or takes it seriously. If you do, you should probably reevaluate that.

Walk score is another matter. It's a niche feature that some home buyers value but not many. My guess is until Zillow gets its act together (and it has bigger issues in that area), it will be a while before they can customize your search in that way. I'm going to just guess that there''s not a lot of demand for it -- walkability is just not really high on most people's priority list.

Many sights do allow you to search by school district/pyramids though. I think Redfin does. Another site that might is www.yournovarealestate.com although that won't help you unless you're in virginia.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Best site I've seen is WWW.NICHE.COM. use best data.

lol, that site blows results are self reported

+1

Anyone who wants to claim their neighborhood as "the best neighborhood ever" and other hyperbole is amok on that site.

Anonymous wrote:Best site I've seen is WWW.NICHE.COM. use best data.

lol, that site blows results are self reported

www.franklymls.com lets you search by walkscore

Best site I've seen is WWW.NICHE.COM. use best data.

Great question. No clue if or when they will do this. I believe franklymls will allow you to search for a specific school.

Re: walk score, I would take that with a grain of salt. Lots of people use it for bragging rights, but even if an area has a high walk score, it may not be walkable. Walk score simply looks at distance from conveniences, it doesn't consider sidewalks, congestion, traffic, crime, etc.

In my never ending search for housing, I'm continually frustrated by the fact that I can't search by the two criteria I care about—walkscore, and school rankings.

Does anyone know if any of the major real estate site (Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc.) have plans to let you search by either of these criteria. While the rankings aren't perfect, they would help me eliminate a lot of places, and perhaps alerts me to areas I'm not familiar with.