HouseValues has acquired San Francisco-based The Loan Page, an online mortgage lead acquisition company, to expand its mortgage offerings, HouseValues said today.
Kirkland, Wash.-based HouseValues, a marketing partner to real estate and mortgage professionals across North America, said the acquisition is anticipated to allow HouseValues to further capitalize on the $21 billion dollar mortgage advertising market and accelerate its growing mortgage business.
The Loan Page provides consumers with competitive offers from up to four lenders. The company markets these consumer requests to enterprise-level customers, including some of the nation’s largest banking and lending institutions.
The Loan Page’s mortgage lead generation platform is expected to allow HouseValues to expand its mortgage offerings and meet a broad variety of mortgage industry needs by offering a comprehensive variety of online products, the company said.
“We believe the addition of The Loan Page’s products to our already rapidly growing mortgage business positions us for strong growth as a partner of choice to mortgage companies nationwide,” said Ian Morris, CEO of HouseValues, in a statement.
“As a result of combining our lead generation and small business sales expertise with The Loan Page’s robust technology and enterprise-level relationships, we feel that HouseValues is poised to quickly grow our business with mortgage brokers, as well as large banks and lenders,” Morris said.
“We’ve had a very successful relationship with The Loan Page, and we’re confident that HouseValues’ acquisition of the company will directly benefit Aegis Lending,” said Forrest Young, vice president of marketing for Aegis Lending, one of the top 40 mortgage lenders in the United States.
According to Borrell Associates, the mortgage industry spent more than $2 billion advertising online in 2004, HouseValues said. By 2009, Borrell expects online mortgage advertising will grow to $4.3 billion, more money than will be spent on direct mail, newspapers, or television.
As mortgage marketing dollars migrate to the Internet, HouseValues plans to take advantage of this. The company will do so by, among other things, expanding its mortgage broker customer base and small business sales focus as well as The Loan Pages’ enterprise-level customer base of banking and lending institutions.
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