Browser plug-in puts neighborhood ‘micro’ data around listings | Armonk NY Real Estate

A new Internet browser plug-in from CensusConnect Realty allows users to supplement the information they see when surfing listing sites like Realtor.com and Zillow with block-level data mined from U.S. Census Bureau records.

Touted as the first real estate product to display neighborhood data around properties at the “micro” level, the CensusConnect plug-in paints a lucid portrait of a property and its neighborhood for buyers.

“In many cities, neighborhoods can vary wildly within a few blocks, and so ‘block level’ data is critical to providing accurate neighborhood information,” developer CensusConnect Realty said in a statement.

The program also offers a glimpse of how listing portals may themselves be able to utilize micro demographic data now available through the recently debuted Census Bureau APIs.

“We saw nobody with 2010 block-level census” data, said CensusConnect’s creator, Carl Manganillo. “Literally, the block-level data was not available until about six months ago.”