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Bill Rice is the CEO of Kaleidico, a leader in lead management systems. Prior to founding Kaleidico he was the VP of National Home Equity and the Home Loan Benefit program at Quicken Loans and one of the founding executives of DeepGreen Bank, an Internet-only bank that was one of the first and (at that time) largest buyers of LendingTree leads in early 2000.

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Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Grows Up, Getting Quoted Like Bankrate.com

December 18th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
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This is just an observation, but I thought it was interesting. As I go about my daily read of online news I am noticing a subtle trend: Zillow quoted for market mortgage rate trends a space long dominated by Bankrate.com.

What does this mean in the lead generation business? Here are a few of my thoughts, I would love to hear yours…

  • Consumers are being presented with Zillow as a mortgage rates brand
  • Shows Zillow’s genius and vision in bringing mortgage lenders to a real estate site (for free)
  • Shows the power of market data in attracting traditional and online media attention
  • More consumer sales leads for mortgage and real estate

Looks like a well executed strategy of a plan that got a lot of early industry criticism.

What are your thoughts? Where will Zillow Mortgage Marketplace head next? Are they a legitimate Bankrate.com competitor?

  • Thanks for noticing, Bill.

    Few thoughts on this. Operating a vibrant mortgage marketplace with a growing database of real mortgage quotes will increasingly allows us to aggregate fascinating real-time mortgage data. We're pleased with the early success of this mortgage business and as you've noted, marketing efforts are starting to pay off nicely as word of mouth spreads about the shopping experience on Zillow. And frankly, it's been great to have good news for home buyers and owners in the midst of all the doom and gloom in Real Estate. Zillow has a phenomenal PR team and now our lenders are benefiting from their ability to get the good word out about low rates in Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. The fact that we don't buy any of that traffic means we can continue to give lenders free access to leads on Zillow while also selling high-performance mortgage advertising at industry-beating value to high-volume retailers. But we still have LOTS of room for growth and observations like yours will be very important to making that happen - so thanks again!

    2 related resources:
    Rate explorer: zillow.com/mortgage-rate-explorer/
    Rate widgets: zillow.com/mortgage/widgets/
  • You make it easy to take notice. Keep up the good things at Zillow!
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