RealtyTrac

The data files are large, some of them over 2 GB in their zipped format and over 10 GB when unzipped (almost 78 million rows). Here's a few things to keep in mind when downloading the data.

• The files are archived into zip package. Some Mac users have had difficulty decompressing the files, as the .zip file is extracted into a .cpgz archive, which still cannot be opened. There are several solutions to this problem, including unzipping the files at the command line or using a third-party compression tool like The Unarchiver. Users who unzip the files on Windows have had more success.
• Because of its size, the data needs to be opened with an advanced statistical analysis package, like Stata or SPSS. Simply opening in Excel or a text editor won't work. Data services supports these packages and can help you out if you get stuck. You may also contact High Performance Computing for advanced processing needs.
• The larger files can take up to 30 minutes to open in one of these programs, depending on the performance of your computer.
• The delimiter for these files is the Vertical Bar |