Rates-Mortgages & Cards
By Kurt Badenhausen
Credit card and loan hawking has been brought to a new level of noise and annoyance on the Web, what with their flashing banner ads and all that junk e-mail. But deleting junk mail is easy, at least on the Web, and some of these Web sites, unlike most junk mail and telemarketing, provide useful information.
Most money-lending sites have lots of information and financial calculators. They can also save you money (Quicken's site refunds $225 to the customer after a loan closes).
Here's a tip on using the Web for mortgage-seeking: Search a middleman's Web site and find a rate. Then go directly to that lender's site to avoid the middleman's fees.
BESTRATE
www.bestrate.com
You can't apply for a mortgage at BestRate, but you can do everything else. The site provides an easy way to find the best mortgage rates in all 50 states, updated daily. The simple design lets the user bounce from the reference desk to one of six mortgage calculators. It also has links to sites for insurance quotes, auto loans and commercial mortgages.
BEST: List of ten worst potential mistakes when buying a home, refinancing or getting a home equity loan. Excellent breakdown of lender fees.
WORST: Stale message boards.
CardWeb
www.cardweb.com
The focus here is on credit cards. You can search for the best credit card deals by rates, fees, limits or perks. Many offers either link to the card's site or supply a phone number.
BEST: The listed annual percentage rates are accompanied by footnotes that explain, for example, whether a rate is promotional or fixed.
WORST: Too many banner ads.
E-LOAN
www.e-loan.com
E-Loan offers more than 50,000 loan products, but the focus is on first-time mortgages and refinancings.
The site walks you through the loan application process, checking its database of some 70 lenders to find the best rates.
BEST: An e-mail service that notifies you when you can get a free copy of your
credit report by signing up for a
free 30-day trial of E-Loan's CreditCheck Monitoring Service. Remember to cancel, though, or you're stuck with the $59.95 fee.
WORST: Overdose of rave reviews from satisfied customers.
QUICKENMORTGAGE
www.quickenmortgage.com
The simple design of Quicken-Mortgage makes applying for a loan easy. QuickenMortgage receives a fee of 0.4% of the total loan but returns $225 to the customer. Real estate listings are provided by a link to Realtor.com.
BEST: Listing of 600,000 preapproved rehab contractors through its ImproveNet.com link.
WORST: Explanations of terms are hard to find.
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