Home-Account has launched a brand new site to help homeowners locate and take advantage of the best loan and mortgage rates available. Based in San Francisco, the company is couching itself as a useful tool for even casual users amid the recession and lending panic.
It's designed to reach out to people who have had trouble qualifying for lower mortgage rates. And since it refused to take any money from the $11 trillion mortgage industry, the company claims to offer unbiased advice that fits homeowners’ needs.
Basically, the company grades and analyzes a homeowner and his or her mortgage, presents scenarios to improve the financial picture, and then pinpoints a user's best mortgage options. Users can then choose what works best for them. All of these functions used to be taken care of through paperwork that brokers charged clients a few thousand dollars to complete.
The site, which the company presented at the beginning of March at DEMO 2009, charges users about $10 a month -- a fairly steep figure for this kind of tool given the state of the economy. The fee gives users access to its network of banks, which now includes 15 but will soon encompass hundreds, it claims. So far, the site has drawn 25,000 viewers. It will take about 100,000 customers to prove the service is useful, according to VentureWire.
Home-Account's launch was made possible by an $800,000 round of seed funding provided by a bevy of individual investors -- including Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff, angel investor Ron Conway, and Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus.
Home-Account's current plan is to raise a first round of $10 million to continue expanding its membership base and banking partnerships. The company's competitors include retail banks and other real estate websites like Zillow, Quicken Loans and LowerMyBills.