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Zillows Mortgage Marketplace

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by Kevin Maney
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Apr 03 2008 12:00am EDT

Zillow's Mortgage Marketplace

Last week, I wrote about a meeting with Zillow CEO Rich Barton, and mentioned in passing that Zillow was close to launching a mortgage marketplace on the site. Well, the feature gets launched today.

As Barton showed me, the site will allow homeowners to put up an anonymous request for a bid on giving them a mortgage. Lenders who register with Zillow (for $25) can then bid -- and the homeowner decides who to contact for follow-up. Lenders will get rated by users, helping to weed out the not-so-good operators. "It's like TripAdvisor for lenders," said Barton -- who, by the way, founded Expedia when he was inside Microsoft in the 1990s.

Barton sounds pretty certain that Zillow can have a positive impact on the mortgage industry -- much needed in the wake of the sub-prime mess. "We are going to shine bright sunshine on the mortgage marketplace," he told me.

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