RETS Units to Building matching/mapping

Question

The question is specially for those who have a good knowledge of the RETS api and its data.

The RETS data comes with some building information like zipcode , street # , street name etc. All this info is entered by different agents and thus they do not co-relate. If you want to get a common building reference for these units, you have to match by comparing these fields. Which is easy for zipcode and street # but very difficult for street name .

For eg below are all for same building

92 3rd Street
92 3rd st
92 sw 3rd St.

The question is that, is there any part of data in the RETS records that can be used to definitely identify units as of same building.

For eg I thought folio-number could be helpful but I am not sure.

Answer 1

Unit number is what you're looking for and I believe folio-num is a synonym for tax id; however, you're really asking a generic programming question as RETS itself is the protocol by which most real eatate data is delivered and doesn't provide any functionality beyond that.

To actually try and answer your question, units of large buildings will have the same street address with the unit number in a separate field. One way to know if the property is really a “unit” would be to check its property type which is usually single family residential for properties with only one home and either multifamily residential or condominium for multiunit properties.