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Replies (3)
- D Ww, "feder1"
- Contributions:35
For argument sake in the spirit of friendly discussion....
1. Will automating the process prevent low ball offers? Or, will it just systematize them?
2. If they automate quotes (#1) then capping them will turns this into a service driven purely by the quote machine. That won't address low ball quotes. It will narrow the market place significantly.
3. The grand experiment here is the value of anonymity. Without that one differentiating factor, why bother? There's leads sites that do that already fulfill that mission, and it appears zillow has recognized that consumers haven't received a benefit from it.
4. The simplest way to avoid low balling. Is for zillow to scrub the fannie mae website and refuse quotes that won't meet the 60 day delivery prices. There may be very short and narrow periods where someone will offer less, but in the grand scheme of things the service will be more successful without that input. This won't work on jumbos though. An alternative is for zillow to acquire daily rates from a broad spectrum of wholesale operations, scrub them, and only accept quotes that don't fall below the average par rate or below 1 standard deviation of the average par rate. A reporting system might work, as well, but may just add to the noise.
5. A management console would be helpful, but at this stage it's low on the list for me.
- Edgar Gallegos, "mtgmaker.com"
- Contributions:137
I think zillow should add some rules to the policy stating that lenders are only allowed to quote on the specific program that the lender is requesting. Allow a section in addition to the note section for a written explanation of possible more beneficial loan programs.
Enact a policy stating that if they believe you are offering frivolous quotes then you would be suspended until you produce a rate sheet to support your ability to provide the program as quoted at profit.
Give the lenders the ability to flag quotes that are frivolous or misleading. We are the ones that are seeing these quotes and we know which should be called out.
Enact a policy to deal with lenders that are abusing the flagging policy.
- D Ww, "feder1"
- Contributions:35
I'll post this here rather than start yet another suggestion thread.
On any loan over 80% Zillow is tossing a calculation in for mortgage insurance. It does not appear that this is controlled by the person making the quote. The issue with this is that if a quote includes lender paid MI then the automatic MI calculation misrepresents the payment in a way that prevents the consumer from making a comparison.
Zillow – Good, Bad, Ugly and Suggestions
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- 3.1/5.0
- (6 reviews)
Contributions:9As of this morning, RMC Vanguard Loan Officers have quoted 855 of the over 10,000 consumer loan requests on Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace. Of those quoted we have had contact with 3.27%.
So, here is the good, bad and ugly and other suggestions:.
Good:
Lots of consumers are interested in receiving mortgage information
Bad:
They don’t seem to be quite as interested in doing anything beyond receiving quotes,
Consumers seem to be confused about how to select the best quote,
Amount of opportunities to quote seem to drop each day.
Ugly:
Low contact rate, loan officers loosing interest.
Other suggestions:
1) Automate the process of quoting. We would recommend using Mortech-Inc (www.mortech-inc.com). They support over 70 lenders, we are one of them and have had a long standing relationship.
2) Cap the number of quotes a consumer can receive. This creates an incentive for the lenders to respond quickly and makes it easier for the consumer to understand and compare the offers.
3) Allow consumers to input their contact information,
4) Create a formal process for Zillow to police low ballers, i.e. set up an email address consumers or lenders could use to notify zillow of abuse. For example, lowballquotes@zillow.com
5) Create a management console so that we can keep tabs on what our LO’s are doing, vs. not doing.
The post is also available at www.mortgageonlineblog.com
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