Opening Bell for the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace

At Zillow we believe in information transparency. We believe informed consumers are empowered consumers. We believe these informed consumers make better customers for real estate professionals. We believe consumers should be able to shop anonymously, so that they are not approached by a salesperson until they ask for assistance. Finally, we believe in open and free marketplaces.

With these beliefs in mind, we are very pleased today to ring the opening bell for Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, extending our leadership position in real estate information and community into a related, but new market for Zillow. One need not look much further than the headlines of the day to understand that mortgage borrowers and lenders are all searching for a better way.

Borrowers have told us via focus groups and surveys that they spend woefully little time shopping for the mortgage they have – 5 hours. About the same amount of time they spent buying their last computer and nearly half the time they spent shopping for their last car. They also tell us that they want their personal contact information to remain private and that they want to see real rates that are accessible to them, not “teaser” rates that don’t reflect reality. They would also like to shop across their options and be able to do an apples-to-apples comparison of loan quotes from multiple lenders in a standard format. Finally, they’d like to be able to understand the reputation of the broker or lender as seen from the perspective of other borrowers, much like they can judge a seller’s reputation on eBay or a hotel’s reputation on TripAdvisor.

Brokers and lenders have told us that they spend too much money and time buying “leads” on the Web. They’ve told us they don’t like calling people at dinnertime any more than borrowers like to be called. They love the idea of free access to an anonymous marketplace of quote requests from borrowers who fit their desired criteria for providing a loan.

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace attempts to connect the demand side (borrowers) and the supply side (brokers and lenders) in a powerful new way that satisfies all of the needs we heard in our research. Will it work? We’ll see, but we sure hope so – and will be listening to your suggestions and feedback to make it better. However, we have cause to be optimistic. Zillow currently has millions of borrowers coming to the site today to look at Zestimates, shop for For Sale and Make Me Move homes, and to participate in lively discussions about real estate and mortgages. So, we think demand for mortgages is there. Importantly, as well, early in Zillow’s life we discovered something that surprised us: 1 out of every 3 individual mortgage brokers and loan officers visit Zillow every month. Last month, more than 125,000 mortgage professionals visited Zillow. Outside of search engines and portals, this likely makes Zillow the largest congregation point for lenders on the Internet. They come to Zillow because of the rich and up-to-date information we have in our database of all homes in the country, including recent sales, comps, current houses for sale, Make Me Move homes, bird’s eye images and Zestimates. So, the demand is already here on Zillow and so is the supply. It is now our challenge to connect these two sides of a marketplace in a friction free way, one that does not currently exist– at least not before today.

So, if you or someone you know is shopping for a mortgage or a HELOC, give our new service a try. If you are a mortgage professional, please sign up to become a confirmed lender (requires a $25 payment to cover the cost of our confirmation process) after which you can respond to quote requests at any time for free. Finally, please give us feedback, as I know we will be evolving Mortgage Marketplace quickly.