Google Mortgage Rates?

Yup. Google has gotten into the mortgage business. It’s in the credit card business and cd’s and savings business. But I’m only interested here about Google mortgage rates.

When I say Google’s gotten into the mortgage business, I don’t mean you can Google ‘mortgage rates,’ ‘mortgage refinance’ or ‘FHA mortgages’ and find banks and mortgage brokers; I mean you can go to www.google.com/advisor/mortgages and Google will show you refinance rates and new home loan rates for a $140,000 loan (on a property worth $200,000).

Description of Google Mortgage Rates Page

And it gives you several types of mortgages, 15-year fixed mortgage rates, 30-year fixed mortgage rates, 40-year fixed mortgage rates, and 3/1 ARM, 5/1 ARM,7/1 ARM and 5/1
ARM rates.

And a lot of nice charts about what those rates have been doing.

And (or should I say but?) if you click on one of them you’re not taken to the sites you usually see if you were to Google the same rates. Instead, you’re taken to a list of lenders/mortgage brokers who will pay Google a finder’s fee.

I don’t know how much. What I know is that Google is an affiliate for the companies on the list. If you buy through Google, Google makes money.

This is different from the sites you see on the right side of Google pages. The companies that advertise there pay Google each time someone click on their link. The amount is determined by the competition and is much lower than what Google receives if you buy from one of the lenders/mortgage brokers it’s an affiliate for.

Is Google’s mortgage initiative bad for you? Is it good for you?

It’s good for Google. It’s probably good for the companies it shows on its affiliate page. It’s good for you in as much as you have a list of lenders with their interest rates all on one page, so you can easily see differences.

Interested to find out what kind of current mortgage rates I get, I Googled ‘Google mortgage rates’ and I got a list that has lenders offering between 3.000% and 3.250%, with APR’s between 3.270% and 3.450%. I also got a list of everybody’s fees – between $0 and $3650, most around $1,200.

Google Mortgage Rates and Fees Caveat

If those were all the fees, you, the searcher would benefit enormously from Googling ‘Google mortgage rates,’ from dealing with companies in Google’s mortgage program. However, if you click on any lender’s detail page, you’ll see a disclaimer: those are/may be partial fees. You’ll only know all the fees after talking with a rep.

By the way, that’s not evil. There are many loans offered and many variations possible (including where you live; they work in many states.)

Whatever you do, ask them to give you a complete list of their fees (you want it in dollars and percentages… To Google’s credit, what they have is both in dollars and percentages). And ask them to agree in writing to pay what’s 5 or 10% above what they quote you. Once they have a good idea about your situation, they should be able to estimate quite accurately your closing costs.

Final point, when you’re looking at lender details pages, on the right side at the top, Google tells you the last time the information was updated.

Google Mortgage Rates – Conclusion

So, overall, Googling ‘Google mortgage rates’ gets you to a page that will save you time.

Google Mortgage Rates – What Are They? top