A Brand New Mortgage Calculator Widget
By: Drew Meyers, Zillow Business Development Specialist | October 3, 2008
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.
— anonymously Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Get this widget
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zillow, Zillow API
Comments
7 Comments so far
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virginia on October 3, 2008 1:13 pm
I need help from someone who knows zillow and I can’t find the answers on line.
I want to add to the blogs and can’t find a place to do that
I’m listed as a agent and I’m a stager. I can’t change that
If no one can help me I’ll delete my profile and start again
Drew Meyers on October 3, 2008 1:23 pm
virginia-
I just reverted your account to a regular account, so you should no longer be listed as an agent.
When you say you want to add to the blogs, what do you mean?
John on October 3, 2008 2:28 pm
Drew,
Has Zillow thought about offering anything like this for reverse mortgage originators? I think you could do some cool things with Zillow that is targeted at reverse originators with a calculator and your data. Just a thought.
Thanks,
John
Drew Meyers on October 3, 2008 2:32 pm
John-
Our mortgage rates & monthly payment estimates are in our API, which means 3rd party developers can build a lot of cool tools on top of our data.
virginia on October 3, 2008 10:05 pm
Drew, Thanks
You are posting new subjects on this blog.
I would also like the opportunity to post, not only replies, original content
Drew Meyers on October 4, 2008 7:01 pm
virginia-
Zillow Blog is a blog written by zillow employees, so it’s not open to outside authors at this time. I hope you understand.
virginia on October 5, 2008 6:16 am
Thanks now I understand why I couldn’t do it.
I’ll watch for posts that I can comment on.
The widget for calculators is a great idea for REA