Hat tip to Owen Raun for this informative interview. In the course of their conversation, Amy Bohutinsky, Director of Communications for Zillow, hints at the direction Zillow Mortgage will take. The cliff notes:
Launching in 2008
“It will help consumers find free information, and open up some transparency into finding home loans”
There will be free marketing opportunities for mortgage industry professionals.
Different from other models. She specifically notes that it will not be another Lending Tree or BankRate.
Finally, she seemed to agree that the project is focused on ad clicks driven by user created content, basically what they are doing in Real Estate.
I honestly hope there’s more to it than that. I bet their will be. My continuing thoughts on how I would build Zillow Mortgage are on hold a bit while I’m playing phone tag.
Thanks for the plug Todd!
A Google search for ‘Zillow Mortgage’ or ‘Mortgage Zillow’ leads many a wayfarer traveler to this blog.