Mortgage Sales Generators  -  The internet is changing the Mortgage Sales Model

It's pretty clear that the Internet is changing how people shop for mortgages and homes. These days, more than 70 percent of home buyers shop online before inking a deal, up from 41 percent in 2001. Mouse clicks, photos and floor plans are the basis for initial steps of a mortgage sale.

As a mortgage broker, you must align your web site with real estate web sites.

What's less obvious is how all these web surfing home buyers are changing the real estate industry. With a flood of data at their fingertips, they're becoming savy and starting to chip away at the 6 percent commission that real estate brokers collect on each home sold.

Lending Tree, a leader in mortgages, has made a big impact. They're using the power of the web to gather home sellers and buyers, and funnel them to realtors and mortgage brokers.

They're bucking tradition, giving potential clients' names to several agents and letting them fight it out. That pressures existing middlemen, from realtors to franchisers, including to be more competitive, offer better service, and cut rates.

These web middlemen likely will flourish in the next few years. While they collected less than 1% of the $60 billion paid in U.S. real estate commissions last year, they're expected to hit 4% in 2007. It may not sound like much, but in such a fragmented industry, small shifts in market share affect consumer expectations. Once your neighbor gets a lower commission, you'll want one too. "The standard 6% commission is no longer a standard.

Many new eBrands are cutting costs by having its agents work via the Net from home, rather than in offices. Agents are getting online training and sales tools, which helps them sell two to three times more homes than typical realtors.

Web referral services are taking a different tack. Their strategy is to help brokers find clients more cheaply and quickly. In exchange, brokers pay up to 35% of their commission when they close a sale. On a $300,000 house, for example, the service can get up to $6,300. If the services deliver more clients, brokers can get enough extra deals to make up for sharing commissions.