Using the Rentometer API and Zapier

 

 


Demo/Use Case

This demonstration is about using the Rentometer API and Zapier to evaluate a list of “for sale” rental properties to determine the best investment opportunities for you to focus your time on.  This demo is intended to demonstrate how you can combine the power of Rentometer’s rental data (via the API and Zapier) as a first-line screening of a list of “for sale” properties. This first-line screening can highlight the best opportunities so you can discard the obvious non-starters so you can spend your time evaluating and prioritizing the properties that meet your criteria.

 

1. API Overview

2. System Prerequisites

3. Rentometer and Zapier Connection – Set-Up







 

1. API Overview
 

What is an API? An API allows two systems to automatically pass information and data back and forth. And it removes the need for a person to manually interact with the system.  API stands for “Application programming interface”

If you think about Rentometer – we have a web interface so when you need a rent comp, you type in the information at the website and you get your report. You may then need to take that report and input some of the data into a spreadsheet or another one of your systems.

With the API, you can bypass the web interface and one of your systems sends a request to our system and we return the results back – all without a person touching anything.

API’s are powerful because they eliminate manual interaction; and, they improve efficiency because they’re on-demand, 24/7 so there’s no lag from when data is requested and when it’s fulfilled.  

The tricky part is that APIs are fairly technical and usually require an engineer to implement. 

So how can you use our API if you don’t have engineering resources available?

You can implement API automation using a service called Zapier. Zapier facilitates the API connections between different systems – with limited programming and engineering support. 

So, in addition to our building our own API, we’ve built a Zapier connection so that customers don’t have to use engineering time to take advantage of the API benefits.











2.System Prerequisites
 

In order to use Rentometer API with a Zapier connection, you will need the following systems and accounts:

  1. A Rentometer PRO Standard subscription with an activated API key.
  2. A Zapier account with an available “Zap” balance
  3. For this example/use case, we are going to connect Rentometer and Microsoft Excel 365. An active Microsoft Excel 365 subscription is required. Note: Zapier can connect to 1,000’s of 3rd party applications and you can explore which applications are available here: https://zapier.com/explore.








3.Rentometer and Zapier Connection – Set-Up
 

  1. Go to Zapier.com and log in to your account.
  2. Once logged in, click on the “My Apps” menu item – see attached image
  3. Once the “Apps” Home page, click on “Custom Integration” – see attached image
  4. Click on “Add Connection”
  5. In the “Search for App” dialogue box – type in “Rentometer” and select “Rentometer (1.0.0)" – see attached image
  6. Copy your “Rentometer API Key” which you will find in the API Settings in your Rentometer account (link here: https://www.rentometer.com/rentometer-api/settings)
  7. After pasting Rentometer API Key, click “Yes, Continue”
  8. The connection should now be active.  You can double-check the status of the connection by going back to the “Apps” menu, click on “Custom Integrations” – you should see the "Rentometer (1.0.0)" integration listed – see attached image.