Feedback and Suggestions

Fee restrictions on the system don't make any sense. Let us put in exactly what they are. Example- one of my lenders charges a single $745 fee, but I can't put that in because the system only accepts $500 in that field. So I have to break it up into two fees, which just makes the whole thing more complicated and less like the actual charges the borrower will see at closing. I think there's some confusion between this being a prescriptive versus a descriptive service.

I would respectfully suggest that you want us to DESCRIBE our offering as accurately as possible, but that it does not help anything if you PRESCRIBE how much we can quote in specific fields. We are going to charge whatever the actual costs are, no matter how we have to describe it here, and your goal should be to make what we say here match as closely as possible what the borrower will encounter at closing, and let them decide about the overall value.

You need to put a cost field in for a flood cert, and another for misc lender fees so we have some flexibility.

I'm not sure what purpose there is in allowing us to quote 15 day locks at application. I do not know any lenders that will let us lock that price until the loan is approved, which means it will almost certainly change from the original quote. I would suggest that you require a minimum 21 or 30 day lock term, and require that any quote be lockable at application as part of your terms of use.


Tom O'Leary
plannersmortgage.com

There's no reason on a refi that we can't give a borrower all the non-recurring closing costs on the original quote. I have gotten significant fee discounts from my title ans escrow vendors, which represent a large part of the value I offer. Nothing on your quote captures that savings, and by not letting us quote the total package you run the risk of inadvertently confusing borrowers who might think that our quotes represent all the costs.

Might I also suggest that you break fees down into lender versus broker fees. That would make it more clear to a borrower who is charging what fees.

Overall, I'm real excited about this. I'm a low overhead, low cost broker with terrible marketing skills, so this site seems tailor made for me.

Tom O'Leary
plannersmortgage.com

I've made a few quotes with typos, which I fixed by deleting the quote and re-entering data.  The system wants me to change things like interest rates when I do this, trying I suppose to avoid duplicate quotes. Can it be updated to allow for deleted quotes so as not to force other changes?

Tom

Tom,

Thank you very much for your feedback. We truly appreciate your suggestions and will look into the issues you have described.   We still have a some bugs and are working hard to get these resolved for you. We will up some of our limits on the quote form and look into the duplicate quote issue.  Please continue to send us your suggestions and feedback!

Thanks,

Nate

Hey, love the new feature. Been waiting a while. But now I'm stuck. I edited my profile and for some reason the site says I must be accepted as a lender...again. I've already been approved and sent about a dozen quotes, but now I'm locked out.

Maybe Zillow could fix this bug so it doesn't happen to another lender? I hope I do not have to wait another three days!

Glad to give you my feedback. Here's a little more.

The saved searches function will not save loan size ranges. I am getting lots of e-mails for loans outside my range. In addition, I would like to be able to filter by LTV, since I am not interested in looking at a bunch of 93% (which are probably 100% plus) LTV refi requests.

Tom

For Nate (or a Zillow representative):

Hello Nate.  Are you the Administrator for the mortgage platform?  If not, is there such a person?

I am going through the site in order to get my company in the network; I'm doing the due diligence before presenting the opportunity to my company HQ.

I've got some questions and concerns. Can I communicate one-to-one with somebody at Zillow, preferably by phone, or at least by e-mail?

Thank you,

Bob Freedman

Is there any way to set up the site so that once I've sent a quote it is taken off the request list I am shown or at least marked so I know which requests I have already quoted?

I have been setp up as an agent and I can not find away to change this to a lender please advise on how to change. Thank you.

Rick,

Drew already answered your question in another thread.

Tom,

The loan amount not being saved as part of saved searches is a know issue that we are working to get resolved as quickly as possible.

Bob,

I will send you an e-mail offline.

Mirada,

That is a good suggestion. We will look into it.

Rick,

Unfortunately we are not allowing agents to also sign up as lender on the same account.  Since we saw your company was a mortgage company we removed your agent status so you are now free to go through the lender confirmation process.

For agents who are both lenders and agents, the solution is to create a new account to use as your lender account.  If you want to keep your old account but transfer your email address, you can change the email address of your existing account and then create the new account with old email address.

Yup, thanks Nate for the follow up.

Again, Two Thumbs Way Up for the work on the boards from employees today. Exceptional.

Another Suggestion....can Zillow add more information on Closing Costs right on the page when borrowers are submitting requests?

You can group closing fees into three main categories: lender fees, third-party fees, and prepaid or escrows.

The third-party fees, which typically the lender has less control over, would include items such as the: appraisal fee, title insurance and credit reporting fees. Some of these may vary depending on which county or which state you live in.
Prepaid fees would include your prepaid interest.

Escrows include things like your property taxes, or your homeowner's insurance....Banks PayOffs that include Interest from the last payment when refinancing.

Borrowers need to be better prepared and informed about all these extra costs that are not controled by Lenders or part of any Lender Fees.

I seem only to be able to review about he last 30 or so quotes I made. IS htere some way to see all of them?

Tom O'Leary

plannersmortgage.com

Suggest you change the question "Plan to live in the home" to "Plan to Own the property". I just realized that I have probably quoted owner rates to non-owner borrowers today.

Tom O'Leary

plannersmortgage.com

OK, I love the concept, but we are definately heading towards a huge problem here with the quotes. The home owners are not getting correct quotes, the APR is incorrect, the fees are not all the fees, there is no spot for broker credits to cover closing costs, you have no spots for critical fees like Escrow, Title, Endorsements, Tracking, Recording, etc.

Also, you need to allow brokers to set up closing costs templates. I should be able to create a template for each lender I use, or each loan program I offer and select it instead of entering the same stuff everytime.  Its going to be interested to see what happens here. You guys need to make some changes and make them quick. I would suggest enlisting the help of a couple brokers/lenders to work in a focus group.

Feedback from the mortgage community.

Things that do not work in the long run.

The potential consumer entering in all his or her personal information, including contact information and ss #'s then getting bombardded by numerous mortgage bankers, lead companies , etc calling all day and night.

Another item that does not work is having not having a substantial investment in Quality Control of Mortgage Bankers offering bait and switch mortgage rates like Bankrate

Also cost per click advertising is garbage like Bankrate's old format which is dying.

Google Bankrate Bait and switch and see the reason why Bankrate mortgage advertising is at an all time low.

http://www.brokeroutpost.com/loans/brokers/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=213576&whichpage=1

I am just curious how some people have 5.0/5.0 ratings after 1 day and in the review it boasts how great they are and it notes that they "Closed" with this lender?  WOW, That was a fast closing! Also, the person that rated them is brand new to zillow and has no info. I surely hope this is not going to be a scenario where you can create personas to boost ratings or trash the competition. Are there built in checks against this?

Reading through the different posts so far, it is good to see so many asking for the ability to add more detail to the quote.  Closing costs vary so much from state to state however, the web form would be unmanageable to encompass every different scenario.  The best answer, in my opinion, would be to have the ability to attach a .pdf GFE and TIL generated by your LOS like Point.  Then we could send quotes accurate for our own state without having an online form that would be full of fees not specific to our own state.

Suggestion: I would like to be able to filter requests by loan to value in addition to the filters already in place (not interested in 100% / no closing cost requests)

There needs to be a way to police the ratings a little. The first feedback I received was from a moron who complained that my credit report fee was too high! $16.66! Obviously a broker trying to trash his competition. How do I get a feedback like that off?

GC - On your profile hit "flag content". That will send it to zillow, if the borrower has never contacted you then they will remove it. Some broker who created a ficticious account did this to me as well, i was not happy.

One huge request ... could we get a "Preview" screen before we submit? I never would have believed how easy is to overlook such simple things until I started doing quotes here. Even changing it from 360 to 180 months can be an embarrassing mistake if you don't catch it right away.

I can't be the only one ...

From the client POV - I was confused about whether I was supposed to enter my current rent into the debts sections.  Is the debt supposed to represent our current minimum obligations or what they would be after we buy/move into the new home? 

Some explanation text would help here.

I am very disappointed in Zillow not responding to at least 8 emails I have sent regarding my companies approval to submit loan requests.  Family Investment was approved 3 days ago and I have yet to be able to perform a quote.  I uploaded my pic and put my name as the broker for my company and this caused me to not be able to perform loan quotes at all.....What gives here?

Regarding entering rate caps:  I am so used to quoting 3/2/5 or 2/2/6 that I have been entering 5 or 6 in life cap area.  I just noticed that some people are doing what I have been doing, and others  are entering the actual cap (adding start+5 like 10.75 for example.)  I think the site wants us to do the adding and enter the actual cap.  Perhaps some clarifying of this on the entry form.

A couple more thoughts...

• Adjustable rate loans often have three caps.  An initial cap, a periodic cap, and a life cap.  On long term adjustable ARMs 5/1 and 7/1 it is not unusual for the first cap to be 6 % with periodic caps of 2%, and a life of 6%.  This needs to be included in the standard disclosure. 
• I wasted several brokers time by submitting a request.  I apologize to the participants I just wanted to see what the e-mails look like - and you all know you did it too.  I suggest that it might be helpful to consumers if the e-mails compiled the quotes as they come.  To illustrate the first quote would appear by itself, but the next would show the first and the second side-by-side, and so on.  It might help consumers.   I realize that this favors the first responder, but it does not do it any more so than the current system.  Since consumers may not keep all their e-mails, or go to the site immediately this may help them compare and ultimately increase response.

Can Zillow add a feature that Zillower can actually send a mini 1003 right from Zillow if they accept a quote?