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Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Educational Video

By Sara Bonert

Services for Real Estate Pros with Zillow

May 01, 2009 04:13 AM

Over the few weeks, you'll see a number of Zillow training videos come out. Recently we did one for Zillow Advice, and now I am happy to present one about Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

For Borrowers - You anonymously fill out a form that gets submitted to numerous Lenders in the marketplace. These Lenders provide you with a customized quote. Then you decide who you would like to reach out to and work with.

For Lenders - There is a onetime fee of $25 to do a verification check on you (a third party keeps this money and handles the check). Once approved you can start quoting and hopefully generating business.

For Realtors - This is a great place for your Buyers to shop for a Lender and a Mortgage. The typical loan request gets responses in minutes from responsible Lenders.

Hope I didn't ruin the video by giving all that away! Enjoy!

Video is shot from the perspective of a user.

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Kevin Heinrich

Heinrich Group - Clear Lake City, TX

Nice post! I like the content and it gives great advice to make it easy for consumers to understand. Baby steps as I always say for customers. Keep up the good work!

May 01, 2009 04:20 AM

Robert Rauf

CMG Home Loans - Toms River, NJ

Sara is back blogging! Great to see you "home" again! have a great weekend.

May 01, 2009 04:23 AM

Fran Gatti

RE/MAX Integrity - Medford, OR

Managing Principal Broker - RE/MAX Integrity

Sara,

Although I like Zillow and much of what the site is trying to accomplish I have to disagree with this one. My clients who have used lenders they have found on the internet have been bait and switched at an alarming rate and have very little success. Finding a lender in my opinion, is just about the most important part of a real estate transaction at this point in time and leaving this important element up to someone you met on the internet is risky at best. Buyers should be using a lender that comes highly recommended by trusted friends, family or associates. I've seen too many buyers get weeks into a transaction only to have the entire thing fall apart because the lender had "changes" at the last minute.

Zillow is barking up the wrong tree with this one.

Respectfully,

May 02, 2009 02:18 PM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Fran, You are exactly right that this happens a lot with rates online. When we were interviewing users about the product, they often complained of bait and switch techniques from of the some of the most popular mortgage sites. How we try to prevent this is by wrapping a reputation system around the quoting process. So if a lender does engage in less-than-ethical quoting, users definitely call them out on this. On the other hand, if a lender is particularly helpful, users are reporting this too. This reputation system should help users steer clear of shady lenders, and make lenders quote responsibly. Are customer service team also keep an eye for anything that looks too good to be true. So far the service has been very popular. It hasn't quite been live a year yet, and the Marketplace activity is: Loan quotes 2,855,867; Mortgage requests 292,95; Participating lenders 4,584. Thanks for the comments!

May 02, 2009 03:04 PM

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Educational Video

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Sara Bonert

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