21 ms·

Google Launches Mortgage Shopping Tool in California

144 points by uptown 11y ago

johnhattan 11y ago
Google had a mortgage-finding tool quite a few years back, but I think they killed it for legal reasons. I remember it, because I found a good rate on a re-finance. The mortgage company was in Pennsylvania and I'm in Texas, so we did the whole thing remotely.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  The UK mortgage comparison tool was launched in December 2012¹. Possibly the market for comparison tools is more developed in the UK — there are high-budget advertising campaigns from comparison websites encouraging people to switch energy provider, ISP, insurance etc. The service isn't run by Google: "Google Compare, the trading name of BeatThatQuote.com Limited..." ² ² https://www.google.co.uk/compare/mortgage/qs https://www.google.co.uk/compare/mortgage/qs ¹ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/12/google-launches-mortgage-comparison-site-305516/ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/12/google-launches-mortgage...
bigethan 11y ago
This feels like Elon Musk opening a Denny's restaurant. You do other stuff, why get into this business, especially if they're just rebranding the Zillow mortgage feed. There's a lot of money to be had (a well qualified mortgage lead is worth ~$90 a pop), but it seems inappropriate for google.
- sureshv 11y ago
  I'd have to think as a licensed mortgage broker, their take would be much greater than $90.
  - adwordsjedi 11y ago
    $90 for the lead, not what it is worth overall. They're not closing 100% and the leads may be shared down the pingtree or as they age.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    And if Fannie and Freddie no longer provide federally-subsidized loans, mortgage products would make a fine fixed income product for Google's cash reserves to help fund Alphabet and Calico. The AdWords money train ain't gonna run forever. Time to diversify now!
    - cma 11y ago
      And if they start funding a huge basket of subprime stuff they will have all the funding they need to really soar their Alphabet internet balloons into the stratosphere.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        If anyone has enough information on borrowers to properly price the risk, it's Google. Far more information than any traditional lender or mortgage broker is going to have.
        bradleyjg 11y ago
        I'm not sure they could legally use all of it to do underwriting, that's a tricky area. Also, for better or for worse, the GSEs + Ginnie are not going away any time soon.
- joelrunyon 11y ago
  Agreed - they're moving up the value chain (why sell ads when you can just take the commission yourself). That said, it does feel inappropriate and I wonder at what point Google's results will become the thing that they tried to differentiate from in the first place (previous search engines had ads placed throughout the results without scrutiny). Funny how they're moving from "these are the best results" to "these are the results that make us the most money."
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Denny's actually makes a profit. Elon Musk doesn't.
  - hamitron 11y ago
    Denny's doesn't make rockets or electric cars, just 24 hours of shitty breakfast food.
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Denny's doesn't need government bailouts to stay open. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elon%20musk%20survive%20on%20government%20subsidies&t=ffsb https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elon%20musk%20survive%20on%20gover... Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space. And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... Uncle Sam would have been better off investing in Denny's.
      - ugh123 11y ago
        My stomach needs to be bailed out after eating at Denny's
      - e40 11y ago
        Uncle Sam would have been better off investing in Denny's. I think that's an absurd statement. The upside for Denny's is not nearly as much as it is for the businesses that Musk is in.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
        I can't tell if you're trying to say that only proven ideas deserve investment or something else. Care to clarify what your point is here?
- billions 11y ago
  Google is likely doing this to quantify your buying power. Advertisers will pay Google premium CPC for targeting buyers with deep pockets. Google can do the math backwards and estimate things like buying power and income provided an applicant can afford a mortgage of X per month. google.com/compare/autoinsurance serves Google's ad targeting in the same fashion.
  - petra 11y ago
    Google can already very accurately estimate your buying power using it's availble data.
  - elsewhen 11y ago
    do you have a source for this idea that they take your inputs and use it for further ad-targeting? i don't see this specifically mentioned in the privacy policy for this auto-insurance product: https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance/form?p=privacy-policy https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance/form?p=privacy-...
- uptown 11y ago
  It's low hanging fruit ... too good to pass up for the potential revenue, and they already have an idea how many people have searched for this info using Google as their starting point.
aresant 11y ago
This is the inevitable fate of all lead gen IMO - Google - between Adwords and analytics - has absolute visibility into the cost per lead metrics and, in many cases, backend close rates for every search category in the world.
- fludlight 11y ago
  Next up: Google Mesothelioma Attorneys
  - Animats 11y ago
    Right. Instead of stopping search spam, Google has figured out how to monetize it. Search for "credit card". Instead of spammy sites being at the top of the search results, you get Google's own spammy ads. Ten years ago, there was a Web Spam Squashing Summit.[1] Google was a sponsor. The next year, Google was a sponsor of Search Engine Strategies, the web spammer convention. That was the moment Google turned to the dark side. [1] http://www.sifry.com/alerts/2005/02/web-spam-squashing-summit-2242005/ http://www.sifry.com/alerts/2005/02/web-spam-squashing-summi...
    - solotronics 11y ago
      I am not disagreeing with you but google flights is really good and google hotels is somewhat ok.
      - zaroth 11y ago
        Does it matter how objectively good it is when Google gets to just put it on top of the search results? Personal opinion's aside, I'm convinced that Europe will answer, "No." Google will be the next Microsoft of our time, trying to split the company in order to get their own products listed in their own Search. Perhaps we've already seen the groundwork being laid for just such a split with Alphabet?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
aetherson 11y ago
I... don't see a way to search by type of loan. You can't just say "I'm interested in a 30 year fixed" or whatever. That seems a bit crazy to me.
- quantumet 11y ago
  Once you have a list, there's a dropdown to filter by type of loan (defaults to 'All')
  - aetherson 11y ago
    Thanks!
vlucas 11y ago
> To power this tool, Google partnered with Zillow and LendingTree. I hope Google isn't just pulling in LendingTree data and using their backend. I just moved 4 months ago, and thought I'd give LendingTree a try. I singed up, and the only real "offer" I received was from Quicken Loans, which I suspect was actually just a blanket offer/advertisement in the system. I also got a lot of bad credit-fixing "advice" that actually wouldn't help me at all - Get another (better) credit card! Take out a personal loan! Reconsolidate student loans! (when all mine were already consolidated at a low rate with EdFinancial). Overall, a bad experience that were clearly just ads/referrals that made me never want to use LendingTree again. Who knows what they have done with my personal and financial data. In the end, I went with a local bank, and secured a mortgage with no hassles at a much lower rate than the only LendingTree "offer" (ad) for Quicken Loans gave me. If you're shopping for a mortgage, just call a few local banks and credit unions. You will most likely get a much better deal there.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  Mmm, the HN affluent community with 820 credit scores and dual-six figure incomes probably won't see much value from this as it stands. But, I see it as jumping point - one more layer of transparency that Google can potentially offer us. Previously, shopping around for car insurance was a pain. Now, I don't have to deal with some guy who's making commission (which isn't bad) on some products but not others (which is bad). I can go to Geico, Progressive and a few other sites-- immediately get quotes-- compare them, and in under 30 minutes I'll have a car insured. Every step of the process was transparent, and I didn't have to deal with a salesman. My parents walked my sister and brother-in-law through the process of getting a mortgage underwritten for their condo as a wedding gift. It involved so much BS such as documentation of employment despite the fact that my father has been receiving faculty checks from the same institution in Cambridge direct-deposited to same bank for more than two decades. Hopefully Google will "Geico" this up and by the time I decide to purchase a condo or home, I don't have to deal with the same tedium that they did. That being said, I hold my personal money at a credit union (Alliant, it's the New INGDirect![1]) because hey, I'd rather support them than Bank of America. The business house bank is with a local bank, again, because my co-partners and I would much rather keep a balance with a small-ish business rather than a conglomerate who exploits poor people and college kids with ridiculous compound overdraft fees. [1] https://www.alliantcreditunion.com/ https://www.alliantcreditunion.com/ Post CapitalOne360, INGDirect has been on a steady decline. I'm now a happy customer. If you happen to be :cough: a former employee of any of the companies within the co-op, you can make an account. Support them or your local CU.
Animats 11y ago
Google's relationship with the real estate industry has a history. At one point, you could see foreclosures on Google Maps. The real estate industry hated that, and Google took it out.
fred256 11y ago
5 years ago Google had a very similar service, which was canceled in 2012. I wonder why they decided to resurrect it.
- fireworks10 11y ago
  Yes - was based on acquisition of UK based http://www.beatthatquote.com http://www.beatthatquote.com. It is still in operation under Google's brand. http://www.google.com/compare/mortgages http://www.google.com/compare/mortgages https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard
vdaniuk 11y ago
This is just an example of ad networks moving down the supply chain. Lead gen, customer retention systems, even support services are a possible evolution of core ad networks services. The reason for this is quite simple: ad blocking.
millstone 11y ago
Surprising they're working with Lending Tree, which is very nearly a scam site. When you sign up with LT, your information is sold immediately, your credit is pulled multiple times (making it harder to get a mortgage), and you get an endless torrent of spammy calls. See CreditKarma reviews of LT: https://www.creditkarma.com/reviews/auto-loan/single/id/Lending-Tree-Auto-Loan https://www.creditkarma.com/reviews/auto-loan/single/id/Lend... Edit: A question about the mathematics of mortgage brokers. From what I've read, mortgage leads are sold for ~$30 and have a conversion rate of ~1-3%. This means that the purchaser of the lead has to recover ~$1500 per closed loan to pay for buying the leads. Doesn't this mean that loans from a broker site like this will cost you a lot more than working with lenders directly? My mortgage (from a direct lender) was a much better deal than I ever found on Bankrate.
- djrogers 11y ago
  Scam site? That's pretty strong language considering that the site actually does what it says on the tin (source: 3x user of the site) - comparison shops mortgages then connects you with the lenders.
  - wnissen 11y ago
    What it does not say on the tin is that the companies will sell your address many times over, resulting in a torrent of spam. I have my own domain, so I can see exactly where those spam originated. Then I used the site a few years later, with a new email, and that one got a torrent of spam.
- nostromo 11y ago
  In theory you should get a better deal working directly with lenders. In practice? For me it was the opposite. I worked with a mortgage broker (a professional, not a website) and I got a much better deal. For startup folks, this is even more common. My current mortgage holder originally denied me credit completely (they were scared of someone working at a startup). My broker knew exactly how to work around this issue, asked me to sign a few forms, made a few calls, and then the same bank came back with the best offer. Your best bet is to get a few quotes directly, but then to work with a mortgage broker to see if they can beat your best offer -- quite often they can.
mladenkovacevic 11y ago
"M" is for mortgage?
- enahs-sf 11y ago
  "M" always has been, and always will be, for money.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
Article link is useless wrapper around http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-google-compare-for-us.html http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-google-compa...
r00fus 11y ago
I tried their auto insurance comparison tool [1], and the UI is pretty decent/simple for comparison. Just wish it allowed for some better comparison - i.e., my current policy has comprehensive for my older car but all the recommended policies don't so prices will of course be off... [1] https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance
dpierce9 11y ago
They did this for solar lead generation with project rooftop.
jhallenworld 11y ago
Will they offer lower rates than Amerisave? I thought there was no room for improvement beyond them, but it would be interesting to know otherwise. I refinanced through them and I check them from time to time to see current rates. I own a two-family house, and it is convenient that their web-site has an option to take this into account (rates slightly higher).
msoad 11y ago
I noticed the website is not using a secure connection!
20years 11y ago
Google is turning more and more into a lead gen company every day. They have been testing something similar with insurance, hotel bookings and solar. Soon enough search results will be dominated by Google's lead capture pages/forms and those leads will be sold to 3+ companies. If Google is confident about being able to capture the leads, they can make a lot more money from this approach vs what they make from a click. If they continue to go more into this direction, would that make them more of a marketplace vs a search engine?
chuhnk 11y ago
I was part of the BeatThatQuote.com acquisition back in 2011. We built Google Compare UK and then the team eventually moved onto to building the US comparison products also. Great to see this progressing forward.
melted 11y ago
The service will be for like 500 people who still can afford (and are stupid enough) to buy real estate in California.
kendrafaith 11y ago
I will like to share the goodness of God in my life after so many months of trying to get a loan on the internet and was been scammed so i became restless and desperate in getting a loan from a legit lender online. But as God would have it, i saw a comment from a friend called William Ken and he talked about this legit loan company where he got his loan fast and easy without any stress so he introduced me to a man called Mr BARRY MORE who controls a firm called BARRY MORE Loan Company, So i applied for a loan sum of ($200,000.00USD) with low interest rate of 3%, so the loan was approved and deposited into my bank account in less than 48hrs, that was how i was able to get back on my feet to keep my broken business running and also to pay off my bills so i am advising everyone of you who is interested in getting a loan without collateral, no credit check, no co signer with just 3% interest rate and better repayment plans/ schedule, to please contact Mr Barry More. You can contact him through his email: barrymoreloans12@hotmail.com
kendrafaith 11y ago
I will like to share the goodness of God in my life after so many months of trying to get a loan on the internet and was been scammed so i became restless and desperate in getting a loan from a legit lender online. But as God would have it, i saw a comment from a friend called William Ken and he talked about this legit loan company where he got his loan fast and easy without any stress so he introduced me to a man called Mr BARRY MORE who controls a firm called BARRY MORE Loan Company, So i applied for a loan sum of ($200,000.00USD) with low interest rate of 3%, so the loan was approved and deposited into my bank account in less than 48hrs, that was how i was able to get back on my feet to keep my broken business running and also to pay off my bills so i am advising everyone of you who is interested in getting a loan without collateral, no credit check, no co signer with just 3% interest rate and better repayment plans/ schedule, to please contact Mr Barry More. You can contact him through his email: barrymoreloans12@hotmail.com

144 points by uptown 11y ago

Google had a mortgage-finding tool quite a few years back, but I think they killed it for legal reasons. I remember it, because I found a good rate on a re-finance. The mortgage company was in Pennsylvania and I'm in Texas, so we did the whole thing remotely.

Symbiote 11y ago
The UK mortgage comparison tool was launched in December 2012¹. Possibly the market for comparison tools is more developed in the UK — there are high-budget advertising campaigns from comparison websites encouraging people to switch energy provider, ISP, insurance etc. The service isn't run by Google: "Google Compare, the trading name of BeatThatQuote.com Limited..." ² ² https://www.google.co.uk/compare/mortgage/qs https://www.google.co.uk/compare/mortgage/qs ¹ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/12/google-launches-mortgage-comparison-site-305516/ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/12/google-launches-mortgage...

bigethan 11y ago

This feels like Elon Musk opening a Denny's restaurant. You do other stuff, why get into this business, especially if they're just rebranding the Zillow mortgage feed. There's a lot of money to be had (a well qualified mortgage lead is worth ~$90 a pop), but it seems inappropriate for google.

sureshv 11y ago
I'd have to think as a licensed mortgage broker, their take would be much greater than $90.
- adwordsjedi 11y ago
  $90 for the lead, not what it is worth overall. They're not closing 100% and the leads may be shared down the pingtree or as they age.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  And if Fannie and Freddie no longer provide federally-subsidized loans, mortgage products would make a fine fixed income product for Google's cash reserves to help fund Alphabet and Calico. The AdWords money train ain't gonna run forever. Time to diversify now!
  - cma 11y ago
    And if they start funding a huge basket of subprime stuff they will have all the funding they need to really soar their Alphabet internet balloons into the stratosphere.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      If anyone has enough information on borrowers to properly price the risk, it's Google. Far more information than any traditional lender or mortgage broker is going to have.
      - bradleyjg 11y ago
        I'm not sure they could legally use all of it to do underwriting, that's a tricky area. Also, for better or for worse, the GSEs + Ginnie are not going away any time soon.
joelrunyon 11y ago
Agreed - they're moving up the value chain (why sell ads when you can just take the commission yourself). That said, it does feel inappropriate and I wonder at what point Google's results will become the thing that they tried to differentiate from in the first place (previous search engines had ads placed throughout the results without scrutiny). Funny how they're moving from "these are the best results" to "these are the results that make us the most money."
tosseraccount 11y ago
Denny's actually makes a profit. Elon Musk doesn't.
- hamitron 11y ago
  Denny's doesn't make rockets or electric cars, just 24 hours of shitty breakfast food.
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Denny's doesn't need government bailouts to stay open. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elon%20musk%20survive%20on%20government%20subsidies&t=ffsb https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elon%20musk%20survive%20on%20gover... Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space. And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... Uncle Sam would have been better off investing in Denny's.
    - ugh123 11y ago
      My stomach needs to be bailed out after eating at Denny's
    - e40 11y ago
      Uncle Sam would have been better off investing in Denny's. I think that's an absurd statement. The upside for Denny's is not nearly as much as it is for the businesses that Musk is in.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      I can't tell if you're trying to say that only proven ideas deserve investment or something else. Care to clarify what your point is here?
billions 11y ago
Google is likely doing this to quantify your buying power. Advertisers will pay Google premium CPC for targeting buyers with deep pockets. Google can do the math backwards and estimate things like buying power and income provided an applicant can afford a mortgage of X per month. google.com/compare/autoinsurance serves Google's ad targeting in the same fashion.
- petra 11y ago
  Google can already very accurately estimate your buying power using it's availble data.
- elsewhen 11y ago
  do you have a source for this idea that they take your inputs and use it for further ad-targeting? i don't see this specifically mentioned in the privacy policy for this auto-insurance product: https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance/form?p=privacy-policy https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance/form?p=privacy-...
uptown 11y ago
It's low hanging fruit ... too good to pass up for the potential revenue, and they already have an idea how many people have searched for this info using Google as their starting point.

aresant 11y ago

This is the inevitable fate of all lead gen IMO - Google - between Adwords and analytics - has absolute visibility into the cost per lead metrics and, in many cases, backend close rates for every search category in the world.

fludlight 11y ago
Next up: Google Mesothelioma Attorneys
- Animats 11y ago
  Right. Instead of stopping search spam, Google has figured out how to monetize it. Search for "credit card". Instead of spammy sites being at the top of the search results, you get Google's own spammy ads. Ten years ago, there was a Web Spam Squashing Summit.[1] Google was a sponsor. The next year, Google was a sponsor of Search Engine Strategies, the web spammer convention. That was the moment Google turned to the dark side. [1] http://www.sifry.com/alerts/2005/02/web-spam-squashing-summit-2242005/ http://www.sifry.com/alerts/2005/02/web-spam-squashing-summi...
  - solotronics 11y ago
    I am not disagreeing with you but google flights is really good and google hotels is somewhat ok.
    - zaroth 11y ago
      Does it matter how objectively good it is when Google gets to just put it on top of the search results? Personal opinion's aside, I'm convinced that Europe will answer, "No." Google will be the next Microsoft of our time, trying to split the company in order to get their own products listed in their own Search. Perhaps we've already seen the groundwork being laid for just such a split with Alphabet?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

aetherson 11y ago

I... don't see a way to search by type of loan. You can't just say "I'm interested in a 30 year fixed" or whatever. That seems a bit crazy to me.

quantumet 11y ago
Once you have a list, there's a dropdown to filter by type of loan (defaults to 'All')
- aetherson 11y ago
  Thanks!

vlucas 11y ago

> To power this tool, Google partnered with Zillow and LendingTree. I hope Google isn't just pulling in LendingTree data and using their backend. I just moved 4 months ago, and thought I'd give LendingTree a try. I singed up, and the only real "offer" I received was from Quicken Loans, which I suspect was actually just a blanket offer/advertisement in the system. I also got a lot of bad credit-fixing "advice" that actually wouldn't help me at all - Get another (better) credit card! Take out a personal loan! Reconsolidate student loans! (when all mine were already consolidated at a low rate with EdFinancial). Overall, a bad experience that were clearly just ads/referrals that made me never want to use LendingTree again. Who knows what they have done with my personal and financial data. In the end, I went with a local bank, and secured a mortgage with no hassles at a much lower rate than the only LendingTree "offer" (ad) for Quicken Loans gave me. If you're shopping for a mortgage, just call a few local banks and credit unions. You will most likely get a much better deal there.

iheartmemcache 11y ago
Mmm, the HN affluent community with 820 credit scores and dual-six figure incomes probably won't see much value from this as it stands. But, I see it as jumping point - one more layer of transparency that Google can potentially offer us. Previously, shopping around for car insurance was a pain. Now, I don't have to deal with some guy who's making commission (which isn't bad) on some products but not others (which is bad). I can go to Geico, Progressive and a few other sites-- immediately get quotes-- compare them, and in under 30 minutes I'll have a car insured. Every step of the process was transparent, and I didn't have to deal with a salesman. My parents walked my sister and brother-in-law through the process of getting a mortgage underwritten for their condo as a wedding gift. It involved so much BS such as documentation of employment despite the fact that my father has been receiving faculty checks from the same institution in Cambridge direct-deposited to same bank for more than two decades. Hopefully Google will "Geico" this up and by the time I decide to purchase a condo or home, I don't have to deal with the same tedium that they did. That being said, I hold my personal money at a credit union (Alliant, it's the New INGDirect![1]) because hey, I'd rather support them than Bank of America. The business house bank is with a local bank, again, because my co-partners and I would much rather keep a balance with a small-ish business rather than a conglomerate who exploits poor people and college kids with ridiculous compound overdraft fees. [1] https://www.alliantcreditunion.com/ https://www.alliantcreditunion.com/ Post CapitalOne360, INGDirect has been on a steady decline. I'm now a happy customer. If you happen to be :cough: a former employee of any of the companies within the co-op, you can make an account. Support them or your local CU.

Animats 11y ago

Google's relationship with the real estate industry has a history. At one point, you could see foreclosures on Google Maps. The real estate industry hated that, and Google took it out.

fred256 11y ago

5 years ago Google had a very similar service, which was canceled in 2012. I wonder why they decided to resurrect it.

fireworks10 11y ago
Yes - was based on acquisition of UK based http://www.beatthatquote.com http://www.beatthatquote.com. It is still in operation under Google's brand. http://www.google.com/compare/mortgages http://www.google.com/compare/mortgages https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard https://www.google.com/compare/creditcard

vdaniuk 11y ago

This is just an example of ad networks moving down the supply chain. Lead gen, customer retention systems, even support services are a possible evolution of core ad networks services. The reason for this is quite simple: ad blocking.

millstone 11y ago

Surprising they're working with Lending Tree, which is very nearly a scam site. When you sign up with LT, your information is sold immediately, your credit is pulled multiple times (making it harder to get a mortgage), and you get an endless torrent of spammy calls. See CreditKarma reviews of LT: https://www.creditkarma.com/reviews/auto-loan/single/id/Lending-Tree-Auto-Loan https://www.creditkarma.com/reviews/auto-loan/single/id/Lend... Edit: A question about the mathematics of mortgage brokers. From what I've read, mortgage leads are sold for ~$30 and have a conversion rate of ~1-3%. This means that the purchaser of the lead has to recover ~$1500 per closed loan to pay for buying the leads. Doesn't this mean that loans from a broker site like this will cost you a lot more than working with lenders directly? My mortgage (from a direct lender) was a much better deal than I ever found on Bankrate.

djrogers 11y ago
Scam site? That's pretty strong language considering that the site actually does what it says on the tin (source: 3x user of the site) - comparison shops mortgages then connects you with the lenders.
- wnissen 11y ago
  What it does not say on the tin is that the companies will sell your address many times over, resulting in a torrent of spam. I have my own domain, so I can see exactly where those spam originated. Then I used the site a few years later, with a new email, and that one got a torrent of spam.
nostromo 11y ago
In theory you should get a better deal working directly with lenders. In practice? For me it was the opposite. I worked with a mortgage broker (a professional, not a website) and I got a much better deal. For startup folks, this is even more common. My current mortgage holder originally denied me credit completely (they were scared of someone working at a startup). My broker knew exactly how to work around this issue, asked me to sign a few forms, made a few calls, and then the same bank came back with the best offer. Your best bet is to get a few quotes directly, but then to work with a mortgage broker to see if they can beat your best offer -- quite often they can.

mladenkovacevic 11y ago

"M" is for mortgage?

enahs-sf 11y ago
"M" always has been, and always will be, for money.

thrownaway2424 11y ago

Article link is useless wrapper around http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-google-compare-for-us.html http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-google-compa...

r00fus 11y ago

I tried their auto insurance comparison tool [1], and the UI is pretty decent/simple for comparison. Just wish it allowed for some better comparison - i.e., my current policy has comprehensive for my older car but all the recommended policies don't so prices will of course be off... [1] https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance https://www.google.com/compare/autoinsurance

dpierce9 11y ago

They did this for solar lead generation with project rooftop.

jhallenworld 11y ago

Will they offer lower rates than Amerisave? I thought there was no room for improvement beyond them, but it would be interesting to know otherwise. I refinanced through them and I check them from time to time to see current rates. I own a two-family house, and it is convenient that their web-site has an option to take this into account (rates slightly higher).

msoad 11y ago

I noticed the website is not using a secure connection!

20years 11y ago

Google is turning more and more into a lead gen company every day. They have been testing something similar with insurance, hotel bookings and solar. Soon enough search results will be dominated by Google's lead capture pages/forms and those leads will be sold to 3+ companies. If Google is confident about being able to capture the leads, they can make a lot more money from this approach vs what they make from a click. If they continue to go more into this direction, would that make them more of a marketplace vs a search engine?

chuhnk 11y ago

I was part of the BeatThatQuote.com acquisition back in 2011. We built Google Compare UK and then the team eventually moved onto to building the US comparison products also. Great to see this progressing forward.

melted 11y ago

The service will be for like 500 people who still can afford (and are stupid enough) to buy real estate in California.

kendrafaith 11y ago

I will like to share the goodness of God in my life after so many months of trying to get a loan on the internet and was been scammed so i became restless and desperate in getting a loan from a legit lender online. But as God would have it, i saw a comment from a friend called William Ken and he talked about this legit loan company where he got his loan fast and easy without any stress so he introduced me to a man called Mr BARRY MORE who controls a firm called BARRY MORE Loan Company, So i applied for a loan sum of ($200,000.00USD) with low interest rate of 3%, so the loan was approved and deposited into my bank account in less than 48hrs, that was how i was able to get back on my feet to keep my broken business running and also to pay off my bills so i am advising everyone of you who is interested in getting a loan without collateral, no credit check, no co signer with just 3% interest rate and better repayment plans/ schedule, to please contact Mr Barry More. You can contact him through his email: barrymoreloans12@hotmail.com

kendrafaith 11y ago