Last week Mortech put out a press release announcing that there were big things to come in 2010 from their company. The release follows the dismissal of a lawsuit brought on by former business partner LendingTree. We all know about the LendingTree/Mortech suit so there is no need to go into it again, but if you are not aware you can get your self caught up here and here.

This announcement is interesting and humorous at the same time, because clearly has an underlying  agenda. Here is what I interpreted it to be saying, “Yeah, we got the shake down from LT. Yes, they don’t want to work with us any longer, but we are still going to serve their clients and guess what, we are still going to work with Search Engines. In fact, we are also going to take our technology and build out our own rate marketplace and compete directly against you.” This was no kiss and make up press release. Here are a few key snippets:

“By partnering with businesses that have a high degree of visibility to this audience, we can help improve that process. Additional companies in the space, whether it is a search engine company or another lead aggregator, will only solidify and advance the future of online lending. Mortech is ready for that future.”

“After a record-breaking 2009, we’re really looking forward to a successful 2010,” said Kracl. “All the changes in the mortgage industry haven’t slowed us down at all; actually they’ve inspired us. Not only are we growing our partnerships with search engine companies, but we’re also partnering with several loan origination software providers, real estate businesses and title insurance companies in order to provide additional resources to the mortgage community.”

Another significant product Mortech is currently developing is a service called The Marksman Marketplace. This dynamic solution includes leveraging established websites to create a unique revenue stream. The lead generation process involves instantly linking borrowers directly to lenders. For example, when a home buyer visits a real estate website, locates a home and then wants to get mortgage information, The Marksman Marketplace solution will launch and provide current rate quotes directly from lenders. Without leaving the website, potential home buyers will be able to see instant rate offers from lenders within seconds.

I can’t imagine Doug Lebda is too pleased with this release, being that he tried to stop many of these things from ever happening with the recent suit.

A little over a week ago LendingTree sent out an email to its lenders stating that they will be working with LoanXEngine as their preferred pricing engine. What does preferred mean for the lenders? Basically it means if you are working with any other pricing engine you are going to be hard pressed to get any technical support. They also stated a cut off date for the support of “other” pricing engines to be Feb. 18th 2010.

While I am on the topic of LendingTree, I might as well mention that they removed their closed loan fee from their fixed filter leads. No more will lenders need to pay their hefty fee for every closed loan, but that does not mean the leads just got cheaper or your ROI is going up. Instead the up front fees went up to compensate for the change. Prices are now range from $20 to $100 per lead. Now let us not forget that you are paying for a long form lead, so with the premium prices you are getting additional data and hopefully a consumer with strong intent to borrow. This puts LT in a the same boat as their competitors with regards to upfront risk of buying a lead. Prior to this change a lender would have no problem paying a fee for a loan they profited on, but now to pay a premium with out the guarantee of closing the lead makes LT look a whole lot riskier for the new lenders coming aboard their network. This will probably not affect the established lenders on the network, because they are already familiar with the conversaion rates of LT leads and will know if the CPL’s will work or not.

This is certainly shaping up to be an interesting 2010 for the mortgage lead gen space!

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