Real Estate Blog

Home buyers want to see all possible listings, not just MLS listings. For an agent or broker website, why not enable buyers to search through all the listings on your own web site rather than making buyers go search elsewhere to see for sale by owner listings?

For those agents and brokers who are Diverse Solutions clients, they’ve just done the legwork for you. They are the first IDX vendor that I’ve seen to integrate non-MLS listings into their search interface. They’ve taken Zillow’s Postings API to allow buyers searching for homes in specific neighborhoods or ZIPs to view for sale by owner and Make Me Move(TM) homes (which are not officially for sale) from Zillow directly in their IDX interface. The links to Zillow utilize our co-branding technology and result in the agent or broker’s contact information and photo being displayed to the visitor throughout their session on Zillow. You can take a look at the functionality on their DEMO site here.

There are a ton of other new features that were added with this most recent release that you can read about on the Diverse Solutions Blog. Congratulations on the big release last week!

See more here:
Diverse Solutions Adds FSBO Listings From the Zillow API to their IDX Product

We are excited to announce the Zillow Quote API  today, a new feature within Zillow Mortgage Marketplace that makes it easier and more efficient for participating lenders to provide custom quotes to borrowers.

The Quote API automates quotes through an application programming interface (API).  When a loan request is submitted by a borrower, lenders using the Quote API receive the full set of details the borrower provided.  Lenders use their pricing engines to instantly create custom loan quotes based on the borrower’s detailed information.  Then, the quote is automatically sent back to Zillow where the borrower can view it.  With the Zillow Quote API, this process can happen almost instantaneously.  Responding to an unlimited number of loan requests directly from borrowers remains free for lenders, whether done manually or through the Zillow Quote API.

Since launching Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, more than 83,000 loan requests have been submitted by borrowers, and lenders have responded with almost half a million custom loan quotes.  The more than 3,600 participating lenders on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace have experienced much success with the borrowers they have the opportunity to connect with.  However, they  requested a more efficient way to provide quotes, so we developed the Zillow Quote API based on this feedback.  As more lenders begin using the Zillow Quote API, borrowers will receive a greater number of custom quotes in a shorter length of time than they do today.  This means they will have more options to chose from, more rates to compare, and more lenders to research and ultimately decide between.

Quotes provided by lenders who leverage the Zillow Quote API will remain customized to each borrower.  Each quote provided will continue to be based on unique criteria borrowers enter on the loan request.  The rates borrowers receive are real rates—not marketing rates—since they are based on a full set of unique borrower attributes. 

Lenders interested in using the Zillow Quote API will be able to do so either directly through Zillow if they have the technical capabilities already in place, or through one of Zillow’s five technology providers: Leads360, Mortech, Mortgagebot, NYLX and Optimal Blue.  With the help of these companies, small and large lending organizations, as well as individual brokers, will be able to automate their quotes seamlessly.

This new automation program is not yet live today, but it will be rolling out in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned!

Source:
Automated Quotes on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace

It’s well known that other Web sites can utilize Zestimates to provide content to their visitors — there are a number of sites (Yahoo! Real Estate, Redfin, ZIPRealty, Southern WInds Realty, Prudential California, etc) in the Zillow API Network that utilize that functionality. What’s less commonly known is that Zillow syndicates a wealth of neighborhood and city demographics, home value, and real estate data via the Zillow API. Banks.com is a great example of a site that has utilized our API to display compelling local content to their audience looking at local real estate information. Below is a screen shot of the Seattle, WA page on Banks.com.

Click on image for larger version

Depending on what region of the country you reside, take a look at some of their other local pages such as San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, New York, Orlando and Charleston.

Particularly for those who are in the camp that believes consumers want to research geographic areas prior to looking at specific listings, adding city and neighborhood home value trends and demographics, test scores, and local points of interest is a great way to built content relevant to your home buyers purchase path.

Here is the original post:
An Example of City Data from the Zillow API - Banks.com

For the real estate professionals and web publishers out there — we now have another widget that you can utilize to quickly and easily add great functionality for consumers to your Web sites. Our latest addition being a mortgage calculator widget (seen on the right sidebar of this blog). When we released our mortgage rate widgets back in early July, we enabled other Web sites to publish live mortgage rates and charts by simply copying and pasting some HTML code. However, we know consumers sometimes want more than just raw rates — they want something interactive to help them figure out what they can afford at the current mortgage rate. As a result, we built a mortgage calculator widget.

What differentiates Zillow’s calculator widget from the others out on the Web? Answer: our widget auto-fills the “Interest rate” field with the most up-to-date mortgage rate. This means the consumer doesn’t have to look elsewhere for the most current rate to plug in. Most mortgage calculators list 6% as the default interest rate, but mortgage rates can and do change frequently. There’s no reason to expect home buyers to know what the current rate is, so we took care of that with the auto-fill feature.

Another great reason to use Zillow widgets: our co-branding technology is built into all of our widgets, which means you’ll always be top-of-mind. Visitors on your site who click through to Zillow from the widget will see your photo or logo, contact information, and a link back to your Web site for the duration of their session on Zillow. It’s a great solution for everybody: you give consumers free, valuable tools to use and in return, you get free co-branding on the Zillow site. Pretty sweet!

Remember 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.

Originally posted here:
A Brand New Mortgage Calculator Widget

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!

A New Way to Integrate Mortgage Rates Into Your Web Site

There are many different reasons to code with the Zillow API. However, Auston Bunsen, the programmer behind iZillow (here’s the FoREM writeup) stumbled on a reason I haven’t heard yet — getting mentioned in the New York Times! Auston wrote up the story of how he got a NYTimes mention out of the Zillow API on his blog this weekend.

So, if you’re a freelance developer with a cool idea, we encourage you to make that idea a reality, by using the API. Who knows, maybe you’ll even get mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Fortune, or another mainstream media outlet.

See more here:
One More Reason to Code with the Zillow API

I spend a fair amount of time speaking with Web developers around the country, and one thing I have heard numerous times is that they’d like to be able to access data on homes for sale via the Zillow API. I have good news — now you can!

We recently added two new API calls — GetRegionPostings and GetUpdatedPropertyDetails.

The combination of these two new calls provides a way for real estate agents and brokerages to integrate for sale by owner listings directly into their listing search functionality. We’re happy to have Redfin as an early adopter (Redfin blog post) of FSBO listings in the markets it covers. Here’s an example of a FSBO listing from Zillow on Redfin (here’s the same listing on Zillow).

Zillow is a living, growing database of all homes — not just homes for sale (we currently have data on more than 80 million homes). More than 1.3 million owners have claimed their homes on Zillow and many have updated their home facts. While we are storing those updated home facts in our databases, we think it’s only fair that we allow individuals to use the data they input into Zillow on their own Web sites, if they wish. This is where the GetUpdatedPropertyDetails API call comes into play. Have a Make Me Move price on your home and want to easily show it off? Now it’s possible. Or, have a listing that you want to automatically display within your own Web site or blog? That’s possible as well.

The GetRegionPostings API takes a place (ZIP code, neighborhood, or even geo points) as an input and returns a count of listings by type (Make Me Move, for sale by agent, for sale by owner, and reported for sale) in addition to some home facts about each property returned. The attributes of each property that are returned are home type, beds, baths, square footage, lot size, and price — along with a count of how many images are available for that property and a link to the home details page on Zillow. If you’d like to have access to the GetRegionPostings API call, please let us know.

Realius is another innovator that has adopted our postings API in the New York Metro market as part of their Price Me Now game - you can try it out here. For those looking to learn more about adding Zillow content to your site, take a look at our API documentation — and don’t forget those mortgage rate widgets that are highly clickable and addictive!

Here is the original post:
Opening up the Zillow API to Allow Sites in the API Network to Access Homes for Sale

I’m happy to announce that Education.com has joined us as a Zillow API partner. We’ve heard time and time again that home buyers want to look at school data, which led us to recently integrate school data in the experience on Zillow. That said, it makes sense that the reverse is also true — those looking at schools are also likely interested in the local real estate. Education.com is a natural partner given their school finder feature that allows users to search for schools throughout the country and an audience that is looking to research local schools. The integration of the Zillow API can be found on their individual school pages — for example, the page for Beacon Hill Elementary or Canoga Park Senior High School. The module (image below) gives the person looking at a particular school some background regarding the demographics and the home value trend in that specific city. You’ll also notice that they are taking advantage of our new co-branding functionality; when you click through from a school page to Zillow, you’ll see a co-branded experience with a link back to Education.com.

We’re glad to have them onboard!

Here is the original:
Welcome Education.com as a Zillow API Partner

The Zillow API is a great way to add local real estate data to your site (for free). In addition to neighborhood and city affordability statistics and demographic data, another thing we syndicate are regional home value charts for cities or ZIP codes — which offer great background information for anyone looking at location-specific data.

Private School Review is a current API partner taking advantage of our regional charts on their school pages (such as on this page for Clearview High School). If you’re a Web developer and want similar functionality on your site, you’re in luck — the folks at NetBeans put together a detailed tutorial explaining how to use Zillow’s GetRegionChart API to add a regional home value chart to your Web site (using NetBeans IDE 6.1).

Here are the Contents of the Tutorial:

• Register To Receive the Zillow API Key
• Create the Servlet
• Add the Zillow GetRegionChart Operation to the Servlet
• Add the API Key to the Project
• Modify the Servlet to Return the Chart Graphic
• Run the Zillow Region Chart Servlet

Thanks, NetBeans and happy coding!

Originally posted here:
Zillow API How-to: Put a Home Value Chart for a ZIP Code or City on Your Site