E-Lenders When Thieves Compete, You Lose

There is an army of foot soldiers on the other side of these nice web facades banking on your ignorance. DiTech, Lending Tree, e-Loan, Quicken, and a slew of other ‘e-Lenders’ have created convenient web-sites to exploit and facilitate the deceptive nature and huge revenue streams of the mortgage industry.

Selling inflated rates that pay huge premiums at the expense of the consumer is still the name of the game and these guys are doing it more efficiently than ever.

E-lenders are likely to be much more expensive than a local mortgage brokerage or bank. Most of them are mortgage bankers (also called Direct Lenders), who have the very special privilege of not being required to disclose all fees associated with obtaining a mortgage.

This is more than just opinion…click this comparison between DiTech and Wholesale Direct Rates. The problem doesn’t end with the e-lenders, their model is fostered by ’spider-web’ – information aggregation (IA) sites like Bankrate.com and Lending Tree, which amount to little more than advertising platforms with a catchy URL and an interface that offers some generalist industry information and remedial finance tools. Just about any broker or banker may advertise on or through an IA, thus making the site no more reliable than the paying broker/banker on the other side.

Visiting any of these sites in hopes of researching accurate mortgage rate and program information is the absolutely futile equivalent of rate shopping through the phone book. Finding an honest and transparent broker or banker through an IA is analogous to playing Reverse Russian Roulette; 5 bullets, 1 empty chamber. ‘Their’ perception is your reality….

Look past the message, through to the entity that’s providing it. What’s their incentive? Change your perception and ‘their’ reality…. **Zillow has recently added a Finance Tab which is a patch link to these ‘misinformation’ sites. Zillows affiliation with such advertisement services defeats their message of ‘helping people make smarter real estate decisions’.

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There's a radio guy who has a list of "Endorsed Local Providers", I kind of like the idea of sitting down and talking with someone, explaining things and getting an honest answer about something, that might be based on a little more than just a credit score.

Years and years ago I was in the tele-marketing field, didn't like it much then, certainly don't today, but there were those who sat next to me who could talk a dog out of his biscuit, they were good. While of course does not mean they weren't shining up the penny a little more than was needed, not false hoods, but certainly pushing the high points and avoiding the negatives.

What we try to do, or are beginning to do is enter into dialogs with people and lenders and find out what makes them tick. Are they all in it simply for the money, or are there some that put people first.

Is the Jimmy Steward banker (It's a Wonderful Life) gone in the annals of history or are there a few still around? Not sure and I make my living on the net, so hard to knock the "E" in lending, but we all might benefit from a good down home conversation about what ails it, be it money, politics or a creaking knee.