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Online lending continues to boom, and at least one mortgage-shopping website is reporting that the housing market is ""heating up,"" based on site statistics. Citing strong findings from August, ""MortgageMarvel.com"":nttp://www.mortgagemarvel.com/ revealed that the number of applications for purchases and refinances submitted during the month quadrupled on a year-over-year basis.
[IMAGE]The company's chief operating officer, Rick Allen, stated, ""We believe there are a couple of reasons for the increased activity we're seeing. First, with interest rates continuing to stay low,
[COLUMN_BREAK]there is more interest among consumers in purchasing or refinancing homes. Second, we redesigned our website earlier this year, and we believe consumers are becoming more familiar with us and the fact that we provide accurate, real-time mortgage rates and closing fees from the lenders who work with us. Third, people also appreciate that they have access to accurate rate and closing-fee quotes without revealing personal information, which ensures that they will not receive unwanted offers from lending institutions.""
Allen went on to add that MortgageMarvel.com's data for searches for interest-rate information on the site doubled year-over-year in August. Explaining MortgageMarvel.com's advantages for potential borrowers, Allen noted that the ""website pulls rates in real time every day directly from the product and pricing databases of nearly 250 national, regional, and local banks and credit unions across the country.""
Concluding his commentary, Allen finished, ""Visits to the site have more than doubled through mid-August, and we're especially excited about the increase in mortgage applications through our website. Our application volume has far outpaced the increase in loan closings reported by the ""Mortgage Bankers Association"":www.mbaa.org/, which appear to be up about 24 percent for the first half of the year.""
