Real-time housing market analytics dashboard for Massachusetts and the US. All data from free public sources — no API keys required except FRED (free registration).
Live dashboard: devbotman.github.io/ma-housing-tracker (coming soon)
- Median sale price by town and county — current month vs. prior year
- Price per square foot trends
- Days on market
- Property tax rates with YoY changes (MA DOR public data)
- Sales volume and inventory levels
- Median home prices by state (Zillow ZHVI)
- Affordability index (price-to-income ratio)
- New vs. existing home sales
- 30-year fixed
- 15-year fixed
- 5/1 ARM
- Refinance rate spread vs. purchase rate
- All charted as time series from FRED
| Data | Source | Update freq | Free? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mortgage rates | FRED (Freddie Mac PMMS) | Weekly | ✅ Free API |
| Median prices by state | Zillow Research ZHVI | Monthly | ✅ Free CSV |
| Median prices by zip/county | Zillow Research ZHVI | Monthly | ✅ Free CSV |
| Median prices by MA town | Redfin Data Center | Monthly | ✅ Free CSV |
| Property tax rates | MA DOR Local Tax Rates | Annual | ✅ Free |
| New home sales | Census Bureau | Monthly | ✅ Free |
pipeline/
fetch_fred.py # Mortgage/refi rates via FRED API
fetch_zillow.py # Download + parse Zillow ZHVI CSVs
fetch_redfin.py # Download + parse Redfin MA town data
fetch_ma_tax.py # Scrape MA DOR property tax table
load_db.py # Load all sources into SQLite
run_pipeline.py # Orchestrator — runs all fetchers
server.py # Flask API serving chart data
dashboard.html # Single-page dashboard (Chart.js)
housing.db # SQLite database (gitignored)
git clone https://github.com/devbotman/ma-housing-tracker.git
cd ma-housing-tracker
pip install -r requirements.txt
# Get a free FRED API key at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html
export FRED_API_KEY=your_key_here
# Run the data pipeline (downloads ~50MB of CSVs, takes ~2 min first run)
python pipeline/run_pipeline.py
# Start the dashboard
python server.py
# → http://localhost:5051- Python 3.12 — data pipeline
- pandas — CSV parsing, aggregation, YoY calculations
- requests — FRED API + file downloads
- SQLite — local data store
- Flask — API layer
- Chart.js — interactive charts
- GitHub Actions — weekly automated data refresh
Data is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice.