Jumping onto the speculation bandwagon, I'll bet that Zillow's new mortgage offering will not include:
-Access to customer name and contact information
-A process that will significantly reduce or prevent "bait-and-switch" scenarios
What I hope, is that Zillow -- in the spirit of Doc Searls' push towards user controlled relationships with vendors -- will enable consumers to share their virtual "mortgage folder". (A concept which Bill Rice has promoted).
Local, Zillow approved lenders will then be able to view the mortgage folders a scenario description submitted by a user and begin a conversation, and potentially earn a relationship and a transaction. Hopefully, this will provide Zillow users a better mortgage shopping experience than, say, walking into one's bank branch, or completing a LendingTree.com application.
Whether or not this is the path Zillow ultimately takes, the idea of a user controlled vendor management in financial services is an emerging trend worth following.
- Wesabe, although it does not allow users to actually propose transactions to vendors, enables at least users to control their financial data and analyize it.
- Mint takes user contributed financial data and proposes appropriate financial products and services that should meet or exceed the existing terms the consumer is getting.
All take a fair to moderate bit of effort by the user. With a user profile/product match process as complex as it is with mortgage financing, perhaps the complexity is still too great to translate meaningfully into a social network in a way that will ultimately improve the quality of customer/mortgage vendor transactions.
1 comment:
you were right. they do not post borrower name or phone. Keeps the borrower in control. However how many loan officers want to work it like that. If borrower is evasive enough to hide their info what will they do at closing ? I'd stick with Unlimited Mortgage Leads or bulk leads with names and numbers the ROI is better
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