INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Zillow, the publicly traded real estate portal and lead generation service, has acquired Mortgage Lenders of America
This is Zillow&sfirst move into originatingmortgages
Until now, the company focus in this space was on providing home buyers with quotes from a variety of third-party lenders.
The financial
details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Mortgage Lenders of America (MLoA) is a privately held online lender based in Kansas
It will continue to operate as usual and will continue to appear in Zillow existing mortgage marketplace, which isn''t going away either
&Owning a mortgage lender will allow Zillow Group to develop new tools and partnership opportunities, including for real estate brokers with
existing in-house mortgage operations or mortgage affiliates,& the company says in today announcement.
Other lenders in Zillow marketplace
may not feel the same way
MLoAoriginated 4,400 mortgage loans in 2017
The company argues that this leaves &plenty of opportunity for independent lenders to continue to advertise and build their businesses on
the Zillow Group platform.
In many ways, this move makes perfect sense, given the trajectory Zillow has been on in recent years
The company recently started buying and selling homes through its Zillow Offers program in a few select cities, so this closes the loop for
buyers who are using this program.
Getting a mortgage can be the toughest, most painstaking and time-consuming part of the home buying
process,& said Greg Schwartz, president of media and marketplaces at Zillow Group, in a canned statement
&Now that we are buying and selling homes through Zillow Offers, we believe that having our own mortgage origination service as an option
for consumers will allow us to streamline the process for people who buy a Zillow-owned home
Over time, we expect the work we do in conjunction with this new line of business will help us expand our offerings to our partners &
including real estate brokers with existing in-house mortgage operations and third-party lenders who co-market with Premier Agents.
MLoA was
founded in 2000 and currently has about 300 employees
It will remain in its Kansas headquarters and its CEO Philip Kneibert will continue to lead the company as general manager after the deal
closes, which will likely happen in the fourth quarter of 2018.
