Zillow and RedFin Cater to Do-It-Yourself Homebuyers

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Mortgage, Refi & Home Equity, Zillow

Zillow_logoIn many urban markets, new tools aimed at homebuyers are about to alter the purchasing paradigm. These tools, which make it much easier to scour home listings, determine market value, and make legally binding purchase offers, are slowly diminishing the role of the real estate agent, especiallyRedfin_logo on the buy side (sellers still need access to the multiple listings). Already, 24 percent of recent homebuyers first learned of the home they eventually bought through their own Internet research (see Note 1 below).

What does this have to do with online finance? Plenty. With 77 percent of home buyers already using the Internet in their home search (see Note 1, below), the online real estate venues will begin to play a much larger role in the process. Financial institutions that get their name in front of homebuyers early in the process have a much higher likelihood of being chosen as the mortgage lender. And with buyers less likely to contact a real estate agent early in the process, traditional agent referrals will become less of a factor in the mortgage-purchase decision.

The Latest Homebuying Resources

Zillow_searchresults_3

Zillow <zillow.com>, the Seattle-based company launched Feb. 8 to much fanfare (so much that it crashed the site) including favorable articles in Walt Mossberg’s Wednesday WSJ column, Seattle Times business section, The New York Times, and many others. Zillow, started by former Expedia founder and CEO, Rich Barton, allows users to research comparable housing market values, both current and historic. Similar services have been around for almost a decade, but none match Zillow’s depth of information and ease of use (click on screenshot right for a closeup). Note: Zillow is using an advertising business model. Currently, it displays Google AdSense ads on the right, banner ads across the top, and other ads scattered throughout the site. Real estate brokers and lenders are expected to be major advertisers. ZipRealty, a buyer’s agent that rebates 20 percent of the commission, is a major sponsor at launch. Other similar services: HouseValues.com, HomeSmartReports.com, and HomePriceCheck.com (from LendingTree).

Redfin_searchresults_1 –

Redfin <redfin.com> another Seattle-based startup, provides not only home-value data, but also overlays home-for-sale listings and recent sales on a satellite image of the neighborhood (click on inset for closeup; red boxes are homes currently for sale, blue-green indicates a recent sale). And with a business model that includes pocketing 1/3 of the home-sale commission, while rebating 2/3 to the buyer, it offers a potentially disruptive business model to the real estate industry which generated more than $60 billion in commissions in 2005 (reference: Seattle Times, Feb. 5, 2006). Although the site covers only the Seattle metro area at this time (which generated $1 billion in commissions in 2005), its primarily California-bred executive team is planning a San Francisco area launch later this year.

Action Items

  1. Keep abreast of homebuying venues in your market areas. Consider advertising or sponsorship opportunities to drive new buyers to your financing options.
  2. Improve the visibility and benefits of your mortgage preapproval program. Look at what Third Federal has done with its Mortgage Passport, a lifetime mortgage preapproval service (NetBanker Jan. 23, 2006).
  3. Develop a robust real estate marketplace for your website. Use your impartiality as a drawing card, e.g., "Looking for a home? Check out yourbank.com’s Real Estate center, where we show you how to find ALL the homes in the market, not just the ones your agent wants you to see."
  4. For those not currently receiving referrals from real estate agents, consider adopting the Redfin discount real estate agent model, helping buyers earn large commission rebates. You could even take it one step further, allowing the rebate (which could be as high as 3 percent of the purchase price) to pay for all or part of the down payment at closing.

    Run this scenario by your legal department: The bank refers customers to a flat-fee real estate attorney who handles the purchase offer and subsequent negotiations for a pre-set fee; let’s call it $500 (see Note 1). The remainder of the buying agent’s commission is used as down payment for a mortgage from your bank. On a $400,000 home, that potentially makes more than $10,000 available for the down payment.

Big Caution: Anyone helping cut real estate agents out of their full commissions will be extremely unpopular, and will face backlash from the local real estate industry. This strategy (#4) works only for financial institutions with relatively few ties to the existing homebuying power structure.

— JB

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Cash and Cards Are Both Endangered Species

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: American Express, Bank of New York, Card Acquiring, Card Issuing, Citigroup, Debit Cards, Discover Card, Mobile Payments, Payment Cards, Strategic Planning, US Bank

Right around the corner is a world with neither cash nor payment cards. Contactless payments mechanisms—built into cell phones or even jewelry—are helping create this world, and the result will help change banking, thinks Theodore Iacobuzio, managing director of Tower Group’s executive research office.

The reality is that companies that once fed the banks’  payment networks—merchants, for instance—will be future competitors. But banks shouldn’t panic about this, any more than when, not so long ago, the Internet was supposed to be extinguishing banks. And banks won’t be disappearing now, either, thinks Iacobuzio: the anxiety over banking’s future, so prevalent in boardrooms around the country, is overdone.

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Paying for Email Delivery

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Email Marketing

Stamp_spdeliveryIt appears the pay-for-delivery email model could be gaining traction with announcements by Yahoo and AOL that they plan to start levying fees of $2.50 to $10 per thousand for guaranteed delivery. According to emarketing guru Anne Holland, who believes that these fees are inevitable, the cost to send email will roughly double for most large mailers.

Her advice:

  • Make sure email addresses are accurate
  • Prune inactive addresses from your list
  • Segment your list into finer increments
  • Look into RSS feeds for some of your messaging

We’d add:

  • If you allow users to designate more than one email address, consider a nominal annual fee for the extra messages
  • Along the same lines, you may want to reconsider the policy of unlimited free email alerts; changing it to a two-tiered approach with a couple free each month or unlimited for $3-$5/month

More information:

—JB

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Credit Card Portfolios: More Pressure, Less Profitability.

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Card Acquiring, Card Issuing, Citigroup, Debit Cards, First Capital, JP Morgan Chase, MasterCard, MBNA, Payment Cards, Strategic Planning, VISA, Wells Fargo

Graph_debit_credit_heqPeople have grown wary of credit cards. They’re paying them off faster; generally, debit cards are edging them out as payment vehicles. And at least for now, home equity loans are increasingly more popular than credit cards among consumers (click on inset for more details and see tables below).

The result? Credit card portfolios are losing profitability, even though net losses and delinquencies are down, and serious questions about the industry’s future are surfacing. So are questions about how wise banks were when they snapped up most of the monoline credit card operations last year. The business model needs an overhaul, says observers, but so far, issuers are just changing the oil. And there may be no way out.

Continue reading “Credit Card Portfolios: More Pressure, Less Profitability.” →

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P2P Lending Rates a NYT Article

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Best of the Web, Loans & Credit, Prosper, Zopa

Prosper_logoWhile person-to-person (P2P) lending will never create the buzz or user base of eBay’s PayPal or Google’s GBuy, it passed a milestone yesterday with a favorable article in The New York Times. The short article looked at UK-based Zopa <zopa.com>, a recent OBR Best of the Web winner (NetBanker Dec. 1) and a similar service being hatched in Silicon Valley, Prosper <prosper.com> (formerly CircleOne).

Prosper_homepageProsper, like many Internet startups before it, bears watching not only because of its relatively minuscule user base–currently, just 12 transactions are pending–but also because of its VC backers, Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Fidelity Ventures, and Omidyar Network, along with its famous founder Chris Larsen, who launched E-Loan nearly a decade ago. The company has raised $20 million according to its website. Click on the screenshot, right, for a closeup of its homepage.

We’ll look at both companies in more detail in the next Online Banking Report (Number 127), due out at the end of the month.

—JB

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Niche Lending Online: Health Care

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Capital One, Loans & Credit

Ten years after the first loan was originated online, there is still a surprising lack of effort at mining various lending niches. Mainstream categories, such as mortgages and credit cards, are rife with great marketing efforts. Home equity and car loans are also marketed effectively by a number of players.

But when it comes to smaller niche markets, such as small business or personal loans, the big players have for the most part stayed away.

Capitalone_healthcare_mainpage_2One exception is Capital One, which recently added a new category to its main navigation bar, "Healthcare Finance (click on inset for closeup).

Healthcare Finance offers personal loans to consumers seeking to pay for the following categories:

  • Dental
  • Orthodontics
  • Cosmetic
  • Fertility
  • Vision

The website features a 1.9% banner ad, but the fine print says that the rate will vary from 1.9 percent to 23.9 percent, quite a range. Loan sizes vary from $300 to $25,000.

Capitalone_googlead_healthcare_1Capital One is using Google Adwords to support its efforts. For example, searching for "loans for dental work" displays this ad (click on inset).

Action Item
Compared to other loan terms, the health care-related terms are relatively sparsely sponsored. You should consider adding these terms to your search-engine marketing plan. To make it pay off, you should build a landing page that speaks to the benefits of using your personal loan or line of credit for such expenditures.

More info: We’ll take a closer look at Capital One’s Healthcare Finance options in the next Online Banking Report to be published at the end of February (OBR 127).

—JB

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Final Bank Marketing Score: Steelers 2, Seahawks 1

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Fidelity, First Mutual Bank, PNC Bank

Pnc_steelers_homepageAs we analyzed PNC Bank’s identity protection services (see previous article), we happened to notice this timely photo of its hometown Pittsburgh Steelers, scheduled to compete Sunday in the Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks (click on inset for closeup). PNC is the official bank of the Steelers.

We were curious as to how many banks were leveraging Super Bowl fever in the states of Washington and Pennsylvania. Using Yahoo’s directory, we found only one of 27 Washington Banks (see below), and two of 68 Pennsylvania banks with homepage references to their home teams.

Firstmutual_seahawkcdAnd only First Mutual Bank <firstmutual.com> in Bellevue, Wash., has a promotion tied to the big game: a 4.05 percent "Championship Rate" on its High-Yield Money Market Deposit Account (click on inset for closeup).

Fidelitybank_steeler_homepageThe two Pennsylvania football tie-ins were simple eye-catching graphics on the homepage from Fidelity Bank (click on inset right for closeup) and PNC Bank (see above).

—JB

Editor’s Note: Since the Steelers won 21-10, we are wondering whether bank website appearance may be a leading indicator of Super Bowl performance. We’ll see next year.

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PNC Bank Bundles ID Theft Insurance with Checking

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Credit Reports & ID Theft Protection, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, PNC Bank, Washington Mutual

Pnc_idtheftlogoHow do you make your checking account stand out from the one across the street, around the corner, or two clicks away in Internet Explorer? It’s not easy if you want to maintain or increase profitability.

Several banks, including Washington Mutual (NetBanker Nov. 8, 2005) and PNC Bank, use a relatively new technique that is inexpensive and plays to the current hysteria surrounding online security: identity theft insurance. Pnc_idtheftinsurance

In PNC’s case, three of its core checking account options come bundled with $2500 to $5000 in insurance: Premium Plan, Choice Plan, and of course Digital Checking (click on inset right for more details). Free Checking does not include ID theft insurance.

Action Items
Before giving away identity theft insurance, look instead at creating a profit center around fraud protection services. As we discussed in a previous Online Banking Report (OBR 83/84), identity theft protection and related credit bureau-monitoring services are among the few relatively easy fee-income opportunities online.

Pnc_truecredit_cobrandIn fact, PNC Bank sells a full suite of credit bureau services housed under Identity Theft Safeguards in the Personal Finance area. The options range from a $29.95, one-time, three-bureau report to relatively pricey $120/yr and $180/yr subscription plans powered by TransUnion’s TrueCredit, an OBR Best of the Web winner in 2002 (click on inset for closeup).

—JB

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Data Security Standards Set by Major Financial Institutions

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Security & Privacy, Wells Fargo

A consortium of six major banks and the country’s largest accounting firms said Wednesday that they were setting uniform computer-security standards, designed to ensure that the third-party computer providers they do business with are adequately protecting both their computer systems and the information those financial firms send them.

“This is good news,” says Avivah Litan, vice president and research director of Gartner Inc. “I don’t think it goes far enough, but it’s smart for them [the institutions] to do it in steps, if that’s what they’re doing. But they need to do it beyond the service providers. They need to do it themselves”

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No More Western Union Telegrams

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Western Union

Last Thursday, the day First Data Corp. announced its reorganization, Western Union announced it was out of the telegram business.

We understand the logic. Who sends telegrams in a world of emails and instant messaging? And though the company doesn’t say so, it’s hardly likely that the telegram business, on which the company was founded in 1851–as the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company–was a profit center. Dropping the business just made sense for a global payments company that makes $4 billion a year.

Still, it’s a melancholy milestone, in observation of which we share with you our favorite Western Union story:

Life Magazine was doing a story about Cary Grant in the 1950s and, not knowing his age, sent him a telegram reading “How old Cary Grant?” Grant replied “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” (Contact: Western Union, 303-967-6416)

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