The sheer volume and types of real estate data available may be akin to drinking from a firehose, but the technology available to wrangle that data is rapidly becoming cheaper and easier to use.

“In the past three years, costs have gone through the floor. The cost of doing (data) integration is so cheap now. The ability for you to integrate and pull in data now from (different sources) has completely changed. You can build something in an afternoon,” said Jack Miller, chief technology officer for the The Goodlife Team, an Austin, Texas-based boutique brokerage.

Miller spoke on a panel about how to work with real estate data at today’s Real Estate Connect San Francisco conference.

Miller noted that data is becoming normalized and “making everybody’s life easier.” He pointed to the Spark API from multiple listing service software provider FBS as an example. The API allows authorized MLS members and developers access to MLS data standardized according to the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) Data Dictionary, which includes some common vocabulary for fields used to represent real estate data in MLSs.

Previously, vendors had to tailor their products to the standards of different MLSs, which stymied innovation in the industry as a whole and allowed other industries to innovate faster, Miller said.

“Now that things are normalized, new tools can come to the market and spread much, much faster,” he said.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/07/10/innovations-in-big-data-set-to-take-off/#sthash.yaN6KaCf.dpuf

Innovations in ‘big data’ set to take off | Inman News.