After Criticizing Portals' Mortgage Referral Fees, Boomin's Bruce Launches 'MortgageMaker' Product

The British challenger portal Boomin has announced the launch of its news mortgage referral product which it says will ensure that agents claim mortgage referral fees from their listings for free and provide free mortgage advice to the portal's users.

The MortgageMaker product is a mortgage calculator on an agent's sales listings that is personalised with their branding and which directs leads to them or to the mortgage brokerage they have an existing partnership with. If an agent does not have a system in place to monetise mortgage leads for themselves then the lead will go to the Mortgage Advice Bureau which in turn will share revenue with the agent.

MortgageMaker's launch comes after Boomin's co-founder Michael Bruce took a swing at portals that earn lead referral fees from mortgage providers. In an open letter published in January, Bruce claimed that "Rightmove and Zoopla could effectively sell agents mortgage referral leads, which have only come to them through agents paid adverts on the portals, to the highest bidder."

British portals don't disclose the amount of revenue they generate by selling mortgage leads, but the former Purple Bricks boss claims that his competitors were likely seeing "in excess of ten million pounds of referral revenue per annum".

The feature is free for all estate agents listing on Boomin and is already live on Boomin's portal site - although it appears that for now, most agents haven't claimed or personalised their MortgageMaker tool.