Where Are All The Local Loan Agents?

Zillow has created a Mortgage Market Place, where borrowers can request loan quotes. Any lender who has been approved by Zillow (it's easy) can then begin giving quotes to borrowers who have submitted requests.

I must have looked at 20 actual requests and the quotes given by the lenders who are members of the Zillow Mortgage Market Place.

One thing that was very noticeable to me, was that there were ZERO local lenders giving quotes to borrowers from the Santa Barbara area.

I'm not certain that this is a good way to earn loans. I do know that many loan people I have spoken with would be happy to be giving quotes to borrowers in an effort to earn a loan.

With Zillow's program you can put in your criteria on the types of loans you would like to give quotes on. It sounds pretty easy to me.

This is really just a public service announcement to the local residential lending community, in the hopes that if these borrowers are doing loans that one of our local folks is doing the transaction.

Check out the requests below. You can click on the details to see the quotes along with additional information on the borrower.

This borrower makes $1,400,000 annually!

Refinance 30 year fixed, 20 ... Credit rating: Excellent (760 to 850) Created: Thu, 4/17/2008, 11:51am Quotes: 6 Amount: $2,460,000 Loan to value: 61.5% Debt to income: 19.625 Location: Santa Barbara CA 93109

This borrower is looking for a $1,200,000 loan on a $12,000,000 property

Refinance 30 year fixed, 20 ... Credit rating: Excellent (760 to 850) Created: Wed, 4/9/2008, 3:55pm Quotes: 5 Amount: $1,200,000 Loan to value: 10.0% Debt to income: 0.0 Location: Santa Barbara CA 93108

Nobody quoted a loan for this person on a purchase. Maybe 89% loan to value is not doable.

Purchase 5/1 ARM, Interest ... Credit rating: Excellent (760 to 850) Created: Sun, 4/6/2008, 12:35am Quotes: 0 Amount: $670,000 Loan to value: 89.375% Debt to income: 22.0 Location:
Goleta CA 93117

Check it out, and I'll See You In Escrow!

Check Out Zillow's New Mortgage Marketplace!

Zillow, who has become known for it's zestimates has now ventured in to the mortgage world by launching it's Mortgage Marketplace.

One feature that should be a real draw if you are a borrower is, you can submit a request for a quote and remain anonymous until you are ready to contact a lender who gives a quote worth follow up on.

The second feature that I think should really keep the system honest is that the borrower can rate the lender they have interactions with. This information will go a long way in helping borrowers determine if they are dealing with someone that is reputable.

I'm not sure if you have ever bought something from Ebay, but I really like to be able to get a review of the person who is selling me something from people who have purchased from them before.

Zillow has a program for mortgage professionals which makes it very easy to take part in. I didn't read all the fine print, but paying a $25 sign up fee was really all I saw one would have to do.

A loan person can then plug in particulars that will notify them when requests they would like to make quotes on become available. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Inman News has posted a couple of articles worth reading if you want some opinions on this new strategy from Zillow. Hey Can I Get A Loan Offer Here, and Zillow Launches Mortgage Rate Quote Platform.

All in all it sounds like a great approach for borrowers who want to use the Internet to see what their options are and it sure looks like a good way for a mortgage professional to generate some new leads.

See You In Escrow

Real Estate Networking, Online

Real Estate Agents and consumers have more and more options when it comes to connecting via the Internet. In the good old days agents would put their listings on their own websites or maybe their companies websites in hopes that consumers would look them up and make a connection with them. Then these listings began to find their way to sites like Realtor.com. Now the listings are being fed to local MLS sites like SBAOR.com and agents can now feed most if not all of the local Multiple listings to their own site through a system called IDX. What next? The last couple of years has seen a huge increase in online networking, Facebook and MySpace are probably a couple of familiar names. The real estate business is also facing the reality of consumers who want to get connected via a real estate networking site before they actually see homes or apply for loans. They have many questions and curiosities that cause them to seek answers. Some of the places consumers are getting answers are sites like Zillow, Trulia, Localism. 2008 will be interesting to see how Real Estate Agents market themselves on these sites as well as how the consumer use these avenues to get familiar with todays real estate market.

Zillow On The Mesa

I am going to admit right off the bat I don't know how Zillow works. But I decided to play around with it for a short while and I am going to focus my post today on the properties that they are showing for sale on The Mesa or zip 93109. I was at first intrigued to see that I could do a search for homes listed for sale in the 93109 zip code and up they popped on a very nice map. My first thought was that Zillow was getting information from the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors and so this information would pretty much mirror that information. I started clicking on the icons to see some of the details of the properties and this is where things got interesting. The first property I clicked on was a home just around the corner from where I live. It is listed with a local realtor but was showing in Zillow as a for sale by owner. So, I went to view the listing on that agents site and I found all the property information to be the same. Zillow did have an advertisement from a competing agent, interesting. The next couple of properties I clicked on were properties that I know are listed with agents, but they appeared to be entered in to Zillow by someone that wasn't associated with the property. Just someone that is a member of Zillow. So I decided to go to the agents websites and view the listing pages that are up for these listings and guess what? The prices didn't match what was listed on Zillow. I wonder what problems this may cause someone, if any. Zillow does have a little link at the bottom that allows the agent or seller to claim this listing, which I suppose let's them modify it. I clicked on a fourth listing and low and behold it looked like the agent who had it listed was also uploading the listing on Zillow. That last one made some sense to me. I then clicked on a few more and one alarming trend was I saw a few properties showing as for sale that had closed escrow. My thoughts are this, if you are an agent you should probably be keeping an eye out for any of your listings that may show up on Zillow. If you are a buyer you may want to do a more extensive investigation of a property before relying too much on anything you see on Zillow.com. See You In Escrow!

Why Does Zillow.com Get So Much Attention?

I have to admit when Zillow www.zillow.com first caught every one's attention I was one of those people. I immediately logged on and looked up my house and had Zillow tell me what it was worth. Zillow didn't do a very good job! It still showed my home being a 3 bed 2 bath home with 1316 square feet. We remodeled about 5 years ago and my home is closer to 2300 square feet now and it is a 4 bed 4 bath. Right off the bat this website struck me as something that needed a lot of work. I have been reading recently and Zillow keeps coming up along with another site name Trulia www.trulia.com. I have not spent any time on Trulia, so I'll do that later. So, I thought I would check back in with Zillow. It has probably been over a year and nothing on my house has changed and there are many sales in my area that aren't represented. I'm still not impressed. I did start poking around and saw that I could go in and change the information they had on my home. O.K. that's a start, but if other people don't do it then how is the pricing piece of the site going to be accurate? I then poked around a little further to see what homes are for sale and landed on a small Goleta Tract home priced at $799,000. The Zillow estimate of it's value was between $1,060,000 and $1,500,000. This amount of inaccuracy drives me nuts and I decided to say good bye again to Zillow, even though there seemed to be many other cool features to check out. I just can't see how a website that got all this attention for being a site where someone could determine the valuation of their home is still getting a bunch of attention. I guess I'll check back in again in another 6 months or so to see what is happening. In the mean time if you want to know the value of your home I would call a trusted real estate agent, of which there are many. See You In Escrow!