Opportunity Score

Redfin Presents Opportunity Score at White House Open-Data Event

March 7, 2016 – Today, Redfin joins with the White House to announce Opportunity Score, a data-driven tool based on Walk Score® that will help Americans find housing with easy access to jobs. You can watch a video of the Expanding Opportunity with Open Data event here. The tool is available at: https://labs.redfin.com/opportunity-score

We’re excited to participate and talk about Redfin’s Opportunity Score, which we’re designing to help Americans find a house or apartment within a 30-minute commute of work, even for someone who doesn’t own a car.

Today’s event is the culmination of a fast-paced, collaborative hackathon launched by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Participants included developers, data scientists and engineers from the private and non-profit sectors as well as subject-matter experts across a variety of disciplines. Redfin’s Eric Scharnhorst led Opportunity Score’s design based on Walk Score infrastructure.

“We applaud the administration for bringing the technology community to the table to talk about economic mobility in America,” Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson said. “We’re hopeful that Opportunity Score and other tools born of this initiative can help people make informed decisions about where they live and give more families the opportunity to thrive.”

Economic mobility isn’t always determined by skill, education or luck. Your ZIP code can play a role, too. Opportunity Score identifies neighborhoods within a 30-minute walk, bike ride or transit trip to employment centers where jobs pay $40,000 a year or more.

The tool includes information about the price of housing. Combining White House opportunity data, Redfin data on home sales and rentals, and mobility data from Walk Score and Transit Score, Opportunity Score can pinpoint housing within easy reach of job centers or opportunities for employment within easy reach of home.

“Affordability is a growing challenge, one we see first hand as a real estate brokerage helping people buy and sell homes,” Richardson said. “But the price of a home or the cost of rent is only part of the equation. People want a home where they can have a reasonable commute to work, participate in the community and access opportunities that can provide a better future for their children.”

Opportunity Score is still in development as we build our prototype to scale. Watch this space for updates or email press@redfin.com to learn more.

At Redfin, we’re passionate about harnessing data and embracing technology to educate consumers and make buying and selling a home easier. We measure homebuyer demand, pinpoint the best day to market a home, and predict which houses will sell quickly, information that helps our customers and informs the broader housing market.

Opportunity Score will join our existing arsenal of tools, including Walk Score and Transit Score, to empower the public and help people understand what it’s like to live in a particular neighborhood. Combined, these tools can help people make choices that can have great impact on quality of life and long-term outcomes for their families.

When the government and private sector join forces to harness and mine big data, we can build great things.