The Freelance Researcher will extract data from PDFs, develop web scrapers, visualize data, clean records, and collaborate with editors on storytelling.
This is a freelance, hourly contract role working on a project basis
Responsibilities
PDF Mining: Extract structured data from scanned or text-based PDFs, including property records and filings.
Web Scraping: Develop scrapers to pull data from public websites, real estate portals, and government records.
Interactive & Custom Data Visualization: Build bespoke maps, charts, and dashboards to support editorial storytelling.
Data Cleaning & Normalization: Standardize, deduplicate, and reconcile inconsistent records across multiple sources.
Entity Resolution & Research: Identify and verify real estate entities (buyers, sellers, LLCs, brokers, developers) using registries and public records.
Story Support & Collaboration: Partner with editors and reporters to translate data into compelling narratives, graphics, and insights.
Automation & Workflow Scripting: Create and refine scripts to automate routine data tasks, including scheduled scraping and data transformation.
Manual Record Cleaning: Willingness to perform tedious but essential data tasks, such as reconciling names, addresses, or document IDs by hand.
Qualifications
Journalistic Rigor & Detail Orientation: Capable of tracing data lineage, documenting sources, and identifying inconsistencies or red flags.
Strong Data Literacy in a Real Estate Context: Ability to understand how data reflects trends, transactions, and players in the property world.
Who We Are:
The Real Deal is the largest real-estate news outlet in the US, reaching millions of professionals daily through our media channels. We have received 60+ awards for editorial excellence over the past six years, including the General Excellence award from the Society of Business Writers and Editors.
Quantcast rates us among the 300-most visited sites in the US and the website with the wealthiest audience and one of the most educated.
As a publication, The Real Deal is to real estate what Variety is to entertainment or what Politico is to Beltway politics – a plugged-in news outlet that is read by the entire industry.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We partner with our employees to support diversity and inclusion in the workplace and through higher education programs supporting rising journalists.
Top Skills
Automation Scripting
Data Cleaning
Data Visualization
Pdf Extraction
Web Scraping
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