As the mortgage market tightens, lead generation companies begin to mount tactical offensive and defensive strategies to position for dwindling Internet originating mortgage companies.

A a recent article by Inman News, "Lead quality a two-sided coin" and commentary from LeadCritic about price increases and my review of the LendingTree Partner Summit seems to have tipped off a opportunistic feeding frenzy for LendingTree clients:

"We at ZipSearch would like to offer any lender shut out from their network to contact us about their unique situation and how we may be able to help them increase their closing ratio with a custom campaign."

Now, knowing the ZipSearch guys personally I am sure this was NOT the intent of the post, but I do think that we should all be concentrating on helping lenders get better at online lead originations and focusing on the consumer. As opposed to taking opportunities to snipe customers.

And to be fair, LendingTree is increasing and decreasing various fees:

Apparently, according to these clients there is also an actual decline in back-end CLO (closed loan offer) fees relative to increases in the match fees in prime and mid-prime leads and there are a significant price cuts in subprime leads.

Believe me no one is more competitive than I am, and I am more than happy to migrate a Leads360, LeadROI, or LeadMailbox client, but I am certainly not going to ever insinuate that my competitors are working against their clients.

I think we should all focus on building the market not cannibalizing it, IMHO. I would rather add 5000 loan officers to the market buying and understanding leads than trying to fight over Leads360’s 5000 users.

Tags: lendingtree, kaleidico, zipsearch, lead generation, lead management, bill rice