Mortech Inc. is enabling real estate-related Web sites to earn revenues by generating mortgage leads tied to its pricing engine.
In a news release today, Mortech said it is looking to support lead aggregation platforms, real estate marketing businesses and search engine companies.
It’s not clear from the statement whether Google is among the targeted search engine companies — and company President Don Kracl declined to comment about it in a phone interview today — but the search giant announced last month that it had added mortgage lead generation to its advertising services.
Kracl did disclose, however, that search engines in general can better compete with bait-and-switch mortgage sites using the live lender data it provides.
Mortech said it is developing Marksman Marketplace, a service that gives real estate Web sites the ability to instantly provide competing quotes to prospective borrowers and generate revenues in the process. Quotes will be delivered from Mortech’s customers. Local news Web sites, real estate sites and multiple listing service sites are among prospective users.
Mortech also disclosed in today’s statement that it will continue to support lenders who are part of the LendingTree Network.
The continued relationship with LendingTree caps a brief litigious episode between the two companies that started with a lawsuit in late August by LendingTree LLC against Mortech. LendingTree claimed that a deal between Google and Mortech violated covenants of a contract it had with Mortech.
Three weeks later, LendingTree dropped the lawsuit.
While LendingTree customers will continue to have access to Mortech’s services, LendingTree has selected another preferred pricing partner, Kracl acknowledged in the interview.
“But as far as we’re concerned — and them — it’s business as usual,” Kracl said. “We respect those guys a lot.”
Kracl said they differ from LendingTree’s because their quotes are based on a borrower’s self-graded credit and no credit report, whereas LendingTree pulls a credit report.
“One of the huge differences is, of course, that we’re trying to provide data for sites such as — let’s say — a newspaper classified ad,” Kracl explained.
Currently, most classified ads sites have general rate data that is as much as a week old. Kracl claims Mortech can provide such sites multiple live options for specific loan profiles.
“We understand there is room in the industry for additional providers to offer instant rate quotes directly to potential borrowers,” Kracl said in the statement. “By partnering with businesses that have a high degree of visibility to this audience, we can help improve that process.”
Kracl noted that Mortech is doing business with around 50 lead aggregators including Zillow, LowerMyBills and QuinStreet.
In addition to lead management technology that is used by “thousands of loans officers and mortgage bankers,” the relationships with lead aggregators tied in with Mortech’s current pricing capabilities are “probably the biggest difference that we’re talking about going forward,” Kracl said.
The news release indicated the company will work more closely with firms that provide auto-quoting technologies as well as retail real-time quotes for prospective borrowers.
Mortech said it is also partnering with several loan origination system providers.
