Jenold Freeman is preparing to step into the ring with the likes of LendingTree.com.

The 24-year-old Albany man plans to have Justgetaloan.net, his online residential mortgage brokerage, up and running in the next two weeks. The Web site is designed to give home- buyers access to dozens of lenders with the convenience of the Internet and the service of a personal broker.

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Freeman, who is one semester away from earning a bachelor's degree in business and economics from Empire State College, has been working in the mortgage industry for less than two years. He started with Aegis Lending Corp., a mortgage bank, and about six months ago moved to the brokerage side in an attempt to earn higher pay.

"It was almost like starting over," he said. "You have to meet people and get your face out there. It was not easy for me as the new kid on the block, but I had to do it."

Now he will try to do it again, as the new player in a much larger and more competitive field. In addition to LendingTree, the online mortgage industry is crowded with such names as E-Loan.com, Ditech.com and a number of other well-known and deep-pocketed rivals.

The same thing only different

Freeman is financing the site with his own money and family support, and may eventually take on a partner. He said the start-up costs were minimal, about $750 to build the site, register the domain and set up accounts on Yahoo! and Google. It will cost $200 a month to maintain the site. The biggest ongoing expense will be for advertising, particulary for online search engines. The average cost is $15 a click for mortgage sites.

Freeman's site will differ from his competitors' in a few key ways. E-Loans is an online bank and Ditech is part of GMAC Mortgage.

Those sites are more limited in the rates and programs they can offer than a brokerage with access to a number of lenders would be.

LendingTree operates as an "online lending and realty service exchange," which collects homebuyer leads and shares them, for a fee, with banks and Realtors. That may result in the clients receiving unsolicited phone calls from various parties that purchased their information.

Justgetaloan will not be a "lead generator," meaning it will not sell customer information to third parties. Freeman will continue to act as a broker, submitting loan requests to various lenders just as he does now. He simply will be conducting most of his business over the Internet. His customers may get live rate quotes and check the status of their loans online, but may also call an 800-number if they want to talk to Freeman directly.

"Everyone is on the Internet," Freeman said. "They are looking online for financial information and programs, but they still want personal service. I can offer both."

According to a June survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an arm of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, about 44 percent of Internet users go online in search of financial information, including interest rates. While that figure has remained steady since 2000, the number of Internet users has increased to 147 million from about 100 million in 2000. That means that about 21 million more people are using the Internet to seek financial information now than six years ago.

Still, other brokers say that while seeking customers over the Internet is a part of every firm's businesses, mortgages are still best done in person.

"I don't believe that mortgages have yet become a commodity," said Nicholas Howland, president of Latham-based E-Mortgage. "While there is a place for online origination, it is only a component of the industry. It is difficult to continue a high level of service when you're not meeting people in person."

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Making a name for himself

The primary challenge for Freeman will be establishing name recognition and trust, without the national marketing budget of his competitors.

"To be exclusively an Internet provider, in my view, you would have to employ a tremendous amount of resources in marketing and advertising just to bring people to your site," Howland said. "LendingTree spends millions just to get leads."

LendingTree is a subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI), a New York City company that had $5.7 billion in revenue in 2005. IAC also owns Ticketmaster, Match.com, Ask.com and a number of other well-known sites. Ditech has the backing of General Motors.

Freeman will introduce Justgetaloan locally with radio ads and a billboard on Interstate-787. He also is going after the "for sale by owner" market, and has gotten some homeowners to agree to let him hang his sign alongside theirs.

He hopes to connect with the national audience by putting a link to Justgetaloan on the Web sites of some large real estate networking groups, and by working with some friends in the real estate industry, including a large property owner in California.

He also expects to get hits off search engines, and timed the launch of his site with that in mind.

"I've been doing a lot of research and from what I hear it is best to start at the end of the month, because that is when Google sends out its spiders to check for new sites, and you have a better chance of getting a good ranking," he said.

Once he has attracted people to Justgetaloan, Freeman plans to hold onto them with incentives, including contests to win free mortgage payments and rewards--within legal limits--for new customer referrals.

bpinckney@bizjournals.com | 518-640-6815