From this Month’s Wired Magazine – Q&A: Zillow’s Rich Barton on Real Estate, AI, and Basement Floods – more on Zillow’s upcoming foray into mortgages.

If you take Zillow’s principles — power to the people, transparency in marketplaces, rich information — and apply them to mortgages, there’s an obvious opportunity. So we’re working on that. We think there are many consumers out there who… There is a lot of mortgage-buyer’s remorse. Let’s put it that way.

Mortgage-buyer’s remorse indeed. This fall’s credit crunch and the fallout from the subprime mortgage mess signals (to me, at least) that the mortgage industry is ripe for a move by a technology player like Zillow to step in and help lead the way for frightened and confused consumers.

by woodleywonderworks

Real estate 2.0 is already chock full of examples of taking the Web 2.0 approach to real estate; Redfin, Trulia, et al. but the mortgage lending industry has remained a remarkably entrenched, anti-consumer and conservative marketplace. Therein lies the opportunity… and it can’t come fast enough.

Lending 2.0 will see companies like Zillow and the also forth-coming RateSpeed (as well as many others I’m sure) try and bring transparency to this sector – to what degree of success, is anybody’s guess right now.

For more on this fascinating emerging space, make sure you’re reading Blown Mortgage and The Mortgage Reports Blog.

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