Internet makes mortgage scouting a little easier

Mortgage lenders have raised the bar on what it takes to qualify for a home loan the last couple of years, but shopping for a loan online has actually gotten a bit easier, if not necessarily less confusing.

Where mortgage-scouting Web sites traditionally required users to enter a swath of personal information to generate rate estimates, the newest sites offer users a way to comparison shop for a loan under the cozy blanket of anonymity.

Question is, do these rates hold up once real names, credit scores and other personal details come into the picture?

"My gut instinct is that there will be a wide disparity about what rates are quoted on these sites and what they actually end up with, and not necessarily due to the borrower," Robert Statnick, chairman of the California Mortgage Bankers Association. "All the sites may not collect all the data that's necessary to give an actual price quote."

In fact, the lenders ultimately do collect the data they need to figure out what to charge for a loan, but these sites have made it possible to delay that step to give the prospective borrower enough time to shop incognito.

Zillow.com and MortgageMarvel.com have embraced this consumer-friendly concept in the past year, although that's where their similarities end.

Mortgage Marvel bills itself as the mortgage-shopping version of travel sites Orbitz.com or Expedia.com.

Like those sites, Mortgage Marvel lets users enter details

on the kind of loan they need. The site then rounds up real-time rate and lender fee quotes directly from hundreds of lenders.

The site boasts that users don't need to punch in personal details to get real rates, not teaser rates used to bait visitors. But the catch is users must have a credit score of 720 or better.

The site requires users to enter only the loan amount, the property's value and its ZIP code. The site then displays a list of lenders offering quotes on the loan.

But there's where your anonymity ends. To find out whether you qualify for the rate, you must fill out an application full of personal information with the lender.

"It's easy, reliable, accurate and fast - there's no bait-and-switch," says Dan Welbaum, chief marketing officer for Mortgagebot.

Zillow's Mortgage Marketplace page also doesn't ask for identifying information. It only requires an e-mail address.

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