‘E-Lenders’ When Thieves Compete, You Lose
September 20th, 2006 Categories: Mortgage News
There is an army of foot soldiers on the other side of these nice web façades banking on your ignorance. DiTech, Lending Tree, e-Loan, Quicken, and a slew of other ‘e-Lenders’ have created convienient 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 generalistic 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’.
Sphere: Related Content
Lending Tree spreads the same disinformation about Realtors. When Realtors compete you win. In reality, just like with lenders, the consumer just gets the Realtor who is willing the pay the exhorbitant fee to Lending Tree. This is rarely the most qualified agent. It often the hungriest agent. The consumer is offered some rinky-dink kickback like airline miles to lure them in.
As for zillow, I guess they had to monetize the site, and the biggest advertiser on the web for real estate related services has to be lendingtree.com.
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