My first day on the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace

I don’t get the opportunity to originate many loans due to my other responsibilities, so was really excited to be able to play around on the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. So excited that when I got on line around 5:00 am and saw the announcement, I felt like it was Christmas morning and I had a new toy to play with.

From the standpoint of the Manager working with a wide variety of Loan Officers, and my over two years experience in working on-line leads, here are my initial thoughts:

1. Be honest with your quotes. I was quite surprised today to not see anyone on Zillow that appeared to be low balling quotes. They all seemed very competitive and honest.
2. Accurately describe your fees, all of them. If you look at the vast majority of my quotes, you will see I am charging a .25 discount. Which is actually an escrow waiver fee.
3. Keep your description short, and relevant. I saw many descriptions on my competitors quotes that were long drawn out sales pitches. Online customers only want to “see the baby, not hear about the entire birth.”
4. Be patient. Just because someone doesn’t respond back doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. The selling cycle with online consumers is much longer than it was several months ago.
5. Offer to send them a Good Faith Estimate in your description upon request.
6. Working Zillow Leads is sort of like a well disciplined work out regiment. Even though your not getting instant gratification you shouldn’t give up. Quote 20-30 deals a day and my guess is that it will pay off.

In general, I am really pleased with the platform Zillow has presented. It is easy to use, and fairly intuitive. I’m sure they have more in store shortly.

Guy Kawasaki says in Rules for Revolutionaries “Version 1.0 is about not having to say your sorry.” Zillow has nothing to apologize about with their first release!