When dealing with geographic data, as we are here, it is immensely valuable to be able to plot that information. One way of doing that is with something called a choropleth map. A choropleth is essentially a geographic heat map. We are going to build a choropleth to create a heat map of average rental price by ZIP code.
The first thing we will need to do this is the ZIP code. Unfortunately for us, our dataset does not contain ZIP code information. We do, however, have the address for the properties. With a little help from the Google Maps API, we can retrieve this information.
Currently, the Google Maps API is a paid API. The rates are reasonable, 1,000 calls for $5, but they also give you a credit of $200 each month (at the time of writing). They also allow you to sign up for a free trial before they will start billing you, and they won't bill unless...
