3. What you will need

Here is a quick rundown of the tools, skills and intangibles you will need to build your tracker.

The following is a list of all the accounts and programs you will need to create your database, set up your site and publish it. These are also included and linked in the following guide sections when you will actually need to use them.

• An Airtable account. (The free plan will suffice to get you started, and is possible to use for the entire project – see the Airtable section for more details on free tier limits.)
• A GitHub account.
• A newly generated SSH key you then add to your GitHub account.
• Git installed on your computer.
• A source-code editor installed on your computer. Visual Studio Code is a popular choice that integrates well with GitHub, and is what we use in these instructions. With VSCode, you will also need to install the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension.
• A Supabase account – you sign in with your GitHub login.
• A Mapbox account. (The free plan will suffice to get you started, and is possible to use for the entire project – see what’s included in Mapbox free vs. paid plans here).
• A Netlify account – sign in with your GitHub login. (The free plan will suffice to get you started, and is possible to use for the entire project – see what’s included in Netlify free vs. paid plans here).
• Admin login for your publication’s site.
• You may want to use a site like TinyJPG.com to optimize images for digital publishing.
• You may want to use a service like DocumentCloud if you are collecting numerous PDF files as part of your data collection. (We do not use this.)

This toolkit is designed to be used by someone with some familiarity with these knowledge areas, though you certainly don’t need to be an expert.

• Real estate reporting experience (by your or your own publication) or a familiarity with local real estate development.
• Data journalism and research experience.
• Experience with web programming languages, particularly HTML, CSS and Javascript.

• Support and buy-in from newsroom leaders and your audience.
• Assistance from others in your newsroom. You could potentially take on this project alone, but at the very least we’d strongly encourage you to separate out data entry and data review for accuracy’s sake. You will also want to bring an editor in for site copy. You may need additional help publishing the development tracker app on your own outlet’s site, changing the tracker’s branding to match your outlet’s, planning to publicly launch the tracker or for more extensive design or app customization.
• Time! Setting up a blank version of the tracker with very limited changes to the site could take as little as 10-15 hours if you’re quick, but data collection will take more time, as will customization of site text, design and data.

The next section includes a brief list of questions you may want to consider before getting started on this project.