The following is an excerpt from the August edition of Mortgage Technology magazine. To read the full story and much more,
As consumers continue to turn to the Internet to shop for virtually everything, online home hunting and property search destinations are big business. These Web properties have their strengths and weaknesses, and their owners are engaged in a battle to delineate the perceptions and realities that differentiate these portals from one another.
This fierce competition continues to transform how consumers shop for homes, not to mention being a spark for innovation. Real estate listing websites are evolving to become full end-to-end home shopping portals; most notably with the addition of technology that lets consumers shop for mortgages and compare interest rates.
It’s still a work in progress, as the leading websites work to execute their divergent strategies in pursuit of coming out on top. But the evolution of real estate websites is already impacting the mortgage industry and will likely have the same sea-changing affect that it had on real estate—creating opportunity for business growth for lenders ready to answer the door.
In the U.S. auto industry, Detroit is home to the Big Three—Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford. In the world of online real estate listing websites, the West Coast is home to its own Big Three—Move Inc., located 40 miles outside Los Angeles; Trulia, headquartered in San Francisco; and Zillow, based in Seattle—which use their national scope to dominate online home shopping.
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