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!