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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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Mortgage Market is still an anchor on IACI earnings

February 6th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

As the battle rages in the IACI boardroom between Barry Diller and Liberty Media the mortgage market is disproportionately affecting IACI’s overall company performance.

Revenue at online mortgage referral unit LendingTree fell by 55 percent to $52.1 million as it dealt with a falling housing market. That unit swung to an operating loss of $508.1 million from a profit of $7.2 million in the same quarter of 2006. During the quarter, IAC spent $11.2 million on restructuring costs for LendingTree and wrote down the value of intangible assets by $475.7 million.

LendingTree is by no means alone in this struggle to find mortgage buyers left in the rapidly decompressing mortgage market. Many of the traditional mega-buyers in the mortgage leads space (i.e., American Home Mortgage, Ameriquest, Amerisave, Countrywide, New Century, Novastar) have significant reduced lead buying or no longer exist.

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