Lenderama

In Part 1 of this story, I talked about giving away credit scores as a foundation for attracting potential borrowers to Zillow’s new mortgage division. While it might be possible to eek out a profit by selling more advanced credit monitoring solutions, this is not why Zillow should offer the scores.
Instead, the “Zcore” should be [...]

Wired Magazine interviews Rich Barton this month. The article covers all aspects of Zillow, but finishes with a quick question about Zillow’s entry into the mortgage industry. Rich’s comment:
“If you take Zillow’s principles — power to the people, transparency in marketplaces, rich information — and apply them to mortgages, there’s an obvious opportunity. So [...]

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 [...]

- Morpheus, from The Matrix
“This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit [...]

A couple weeks back, I posted about Zillow’s looming entry into the mortgage industry, and lobbied for opinions from all of you as to how you thought Zillow might, or should operate. Today I want to reflect upon how I think they should do it.
I think it’s important to first look at how Zillow [...]

Update – Zillow Mortgage Marketplace has launched. My full review is linked.

Earlier this Summer, a breif post on the Zillow blog gave the mortgage industry a quick glimpse into the company’s future plans.
We’re working on a new loan service we’ll be launching later this year. Yes, we are being somewhat cryptic as we don’t want [...]