Archive for April, 2007
Where IS The XBroker.com?
April 16th, 2007 Categories: Mortgage News
With my ADD in full effect and in the interest of priority, I’ve decided to keep my XBroker Blog here at thexbroker.com for awhile longer.
The good folk at RSS Pieces (Very nice new layout, Mary) are slammed with work re: Realespace, and don’t feel their best time is spent filling my daily (hourly) blog update requests. When this site moves to blog.xbroker.org, it will be evident by an auto redirect.
As you can see Iv’e done a complete rehaul of the site, adding such tabs as:
My site feeds were also aparently broken, so please take the time to re-register:
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RateSpeed, The Mortgage Rate Search Engine
April 11th, 2007 Categories: Mortgage News, Tranparent mortgage pricing, ratespeed
As a company RateSpeed probably looks like another internet start-up proposing a grand solution. It apparently smells of LendingTree and a slew of other similar ‘Lead Gen’ models, which is highly understandable, after all I haven’t spoke in any great detail about how we actually propose to deliver transparent wholesale mortgage rates.
I imagine most brokers and bankers also smell another company looking to carve out a pound of flesh for itself and/or cut out the individual professional in the process. For anyone that isn’t in the know, LendingTree charges $10,000-$25,000 just to sign up for the privilege to then pay for their leads and additional fees if the loan closes. When broker/bankers compete on Lending Tree, they must pass on these costs to the consumer. Similar things can be said about most all other Lead-Gen companies. It’s a fledgling and increasingly expensive business for mortgage professionals and subsequently consumers. S*^# runs downhill 
Quite simply RateSpeed is a rate.bot that can crawl and extract best case interest rate pricing results from a mortgage professionals existing broker/banker relationships.
More specifically, the software can crawl multiple disparate feeds provided by any number of wholesale mortgage providers, essentially allowing a broker/banker to submit a borrowers qualifying and anonymous risk-based criteria to a single point of entry, yielding all or best case results. Broker/bankers are often ‘approved’ with as many as 50 lenders, actually ’shopping’ an individual borrower to this many resources is time and cost prohibitive. RateSpeed prices every lender in seconds, insuring all resources are considered and exhausted.
Consumers shall have access to the exact same RateSpeed interface and information that our affiliated broker/banker does. No more bait and switch, smoke and mirrors, or wondering if one really got the best deal they could. Par rates and yield spread premiums will be there for all to see. As is often said in the mortgage world, ‘we all have access to the exact same rates and programs’, its how well one can sell themselves or their company. Mortgage professionals that utilize our RateSpeed enabled sites will be looked at as transparent service providers, instead of Salesman.
RateSpeed will not be cost prohibitive. We shall not charge a per deal or referral fee. Any ethical, transparent broker/banker should be able to afford our products.
With great power comes great responsibility (Thx uncle Ben). By providing the mortgage professional community with a powerful and time saving tool we are mandating they share it with their potential clients. Consumers will see exactly what the professional sees, total unabated transparency. Our subscribing broker/bankers will have NO ability to manipulate the information before a consumer sees it AND they must charge a flat fee, disclosed up front, and verified via the funding lender.
We hope to raise the baseline of what constitutes a good mortgage away from interest rates and cost (since ‘we all have access to the same candy bag) and more towards qualified, efficient service. Alas, the technology won’t be for everyone, i.e. many broker/bankers will condemn it as some sort of heresy, while others will tell their clients that they already practice such ethical standards. At the end of the day, there’s really only one way to know.
Who will the increasingly discerning and educated consumer trust? The broker/banker who says ‘Trust Me’, or the one who doesn’t need to blow such smoke?
Also See:
Blind Men and the Transparency Mortgage Elephant
Finally, A Mortgage Search Engine?
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