A New Way to Integrate Mortgage Rates Into Your Web Site
By: Drew Meyers, Business Development Specialist | September 24, 2008
We already have two mortgage widgets (mortgage rates and a mortgage calculator) that allow other sites to pull in mortgage rates from Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, but we realize widgets don’t satisfy the needs of all of our partners. As a result of feedback over the past few months from real estate technology companies and larger web properties that require more design flexibility, we built two new Mortgage API calls to satisfy their development needs and added them to the Zillow API Network.
- GetRateSummary - Returns the current rates per loan type — as well as rates from a week ago — from Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. Current supported loan types are 30-year fixed, 15-year fixed, and 5/1 ARM. Rates are computed from real quotes borrowers receive from lenders just seconds before the rate data is returned.
- GetMonthlyPayments - Returns the estimated monthly payment that includes principal and interest based on today’s mortgage rate. The API returns the estimated monthly payment per loan type (30-year fixed, 15-year fixed, and 5/1 ARM). If a ZIP code is entered, the estimated taxes and insurance are returned in the result set.
The fact that you can now retrieve raw mortgage rates via our API is very cool, but I think the fact that you can now pull an estimated monthly payment for a specific loan amount based on today’s live rates is the bigger win here. For the brokerages and technology providers out there, the GetMonthlyPayments API means you can now build a custom monthly payment estimator module on your own listing pages (which we’ve integrated on Zillow listings pages).
We’ve been busy figuring out additional ways for Web publishers to utilize our data on their sites and the last addition to the Zillow API was for sale listings. We know school data, neighborhood boundaries, and local amenities are of interest, but I’m curious what other types of data you think would be valuable content for your Web site? If you have additional ideas of Zillow data you’d like access to, don’t hesitate to let us know!
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zillow API
Comments
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Alida Crudo on September 24, 2008 3:08 pm
Hi Drew, I found this article to be very interesting. I must confess I’m not very tech-savvy, so where should I start on installing this widget onto my website? Or if anyone else could shed some light on this how-to… I would really appreciate it. Thanks!
Jason Tan on September 24, 2008 7:16 pm
Hi Alida,
Jason from Zillow here. What you really want are our “cut and paste” mortgage widgets which can be found on our Web Tools page. Click on the “learn more” links, choose one of the widget types, and then just cut and paste the HTML in the text box at the bottom of the page onto your website. Hope that works!
A Brand New Mortgage Calculator Widget | Zillow® Blog on October 3, 2008 12:41 pm
[…] that if you are a software developer (or know one who can help you), you can also use our API program to access mortgage rates and develop your own calculator. Mortgage Calculator Your browser doesn’t support frames. Please visit Zillow Mortgage […]