It?s Zillow?s latest move toward becoming a one-stop shop for all things real estate Zillow is already buying and selling homes and now it wants to be your mortgage lender, too. Today, the company announced a fresh makeover to a key piece of its bold strategy to become a one-stop shop for real estate transactions.
In August 2018, Zillow purchased Mortgage Lenders of America, a Kansas-based mortgage originator that produced roughly 4,000 home loans in 2018, for $65 million. Now, that division has been rebranded into Zillow Home Loans.
?Getting a mortgage is often the hardest, most complicated part of buying a home,? said Erin Lantz, vice president and general manager of mortgages at Zillow Group, in a press release. ?With Zillow Home Loans we are taking an incredible step forward to deliver an integrated payments platform to complete the financing for Zillow Offers that delivers a more seamless, on-demand real estate experience today?s consumers expect.? Zillow caused a stir in the real estate industry on its earnings call in February by formally announcing its intent to transform from a real estate advertising platform into a full-service lender, advertiser, and home buyer, in addition to shaking up its corporate leadership.
Part of this new strategy is Zillow?s aggressive push into the so-called ?iBuyer? space with its Zillow Offers program. Zillow Offers gives prospective home sellers an algorithmically determined ?fair market? offer to buy their house, an offer th...