realestate-mcp

An MCP server that lets Claude Code search realestate.com.au — for-sale, rental, and sold listings, with full property detail.

> find me 3-bed houses in Bondi under $5m

  25 listings, 64 total across 3 pages
  1 Miller Street, Bondi NSW 2026     Onsite auction 29 August   5bd 4ba 3car   House
  25 Wellington Street, Bondi         Auction                    5bd 4ba 2car   House
  8B Castlefield Street, Bondi        Buyers Guide $3,000,000    3bd 2ba 1car   House

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• Google Chrome installed (the real browser — see How it works)

Setup

npm install && npm run build

Then run the one-time warm-up. A Chrome window opens for a few seconds and closes itself:

node dist/index.js setup

Register with Claude Code:

claude mcp add realestate -- node "E:/Personal Projects/RealEstateMCP/dist/index.js"

Tools

Tool	What it does
search_listings	Search buy / rent / sold by location, with price, bed, bath, car, land-size and property-type filters. 25 results per page.
get_listing	Full detail for one listing — description, all photos, floorplans, agents, agency ratings, suburb market insights. Takes a URL or bare listing ID.
resolve_location	Turn "bondi" into canonical suburbs with state and postcode. No browser needed, ~50ms. Use it to disambiguate before searching.

Returned fields

Address (with suburb/state/postcode), price display, bedrooms, bathrooms, car spaces, studies, land and building size, property type, agency (with average rating and review count), agents (name, job title, profile URL), inspection times and auction dates as ISO 8601 with offset, description, photo and floorplan URLs.

Results include listings REA blends in from neighbouring suburbs; those are flagged isSurrounding: true.

How it works

realestate.com.au is behind Kasada bot protection. Everything in this server is shaped by that:

• Raw HTTP does not work. Every endpoint — including lexa.realestate.com.au/graphql and services.realestate.com.au — returns 429 with a x-kpsdk-ct header. Those APIs are scoped to signed mobile-app tokens.
• Headless does not work from a cold start. Plain Playwright, Playwright with anti-automation flags, and even patched Chrome all get 429 on a fresh profile.
• What works: patchright driving your real installed Chrome with a persistent profile, warmed up headed once. Kasada issues its challenge, the browser solves it, and the token persists in the profile directory. Headless works from then on.

That's why setup opens a visible window once, and why bundled Chromium isn't used — it's fingerprinted and blocked.

Data is read from the page's server-side hydration blob rather than the DOM:

<script>window.ArgonautExchange={ "resi-property_listing-experience-web": {
  "urqlClientCache": "{\"<hash>\":{\"data\":\"{…}\"}}" }}</script>
     └─> buySearch.results.exact.items[].listing   ← the real Lexa GraphQL objects

Two things that will bite you if you modify the parser:

• The app deletes window.ArgonautExchange after hydration. Reading the live global returns undefined on a page that loaded perfectly fine. Parse the <script> tag's source text.
• Results are split into results.exact and results.surrounding. Reading only exact silently drops up to two-thirds of a page.

Configuration

Env var	Default	Purpose
REALESTATE_MCP_PROFILE	~/.realestate-mcp/profile	Where the warm browser profile lives
REALESTATE_MCP_CHANNEL	chrome	Browser channel; msedge also works
REALESTATE_MCP_TIMEOUT	60000	Navigation timeout in ms

Troubleshooting

"Blocked by realestate.com.au bot protection" — the profile has gone cold. Re-run node dist/index.js setup. Token lifetime is not documented; expect to re-warm occasionally.

"Could not launch Google Chrome" — install Chrome, or set REALESTATE_MCP_CHANNEL=msedge.

Warm-up fails repeatedly — rapid requests raise your Kasada score and it takes a while to decay. Wait a few minutes, or try from a different network.