Zillow Home Loans review 2026

Post Content

​

The Yahoo Finance View: A mash-up of a mortgage lender and a lender marketplace, Zillow Home Loans may be best for those looking to shop multiple mortgage providers in one place.

One of the biggest names in real estate, particularly home search, is also a rapidly growing mortgage lender. Zillow Home Loans represents the kind of “integrated” provider that’s becoming more common in today’s market. This kind of mortgage loan firm connects consumers to not only lending services, but also to real estate agents, attorneys, closing services, and even insurance.

Zillow obviously helps you find a home to buy — or rent — and connects you to real estate agents, but now, it’s becoming a bigger player in home financing.

Yahoo Finance deployed a real-life user perspective on services offered and a critical analysis of mortgage rates and loan costs to examine how Zillow Home Loans compares to competing mortgage lenders.

Key benefits

Need to know

Get started at the Zillow Home Loans website.

Zillow Home Loans offers the following types of home loans:

Zillow Home Loans does not offer the following types of home loans:

How a buydown loan helps you buy down your mortgage interest rate

Navigating through the Zillow Learning Center will eventually take you to a first-time home buyer page with over 100 articles, some with embedded videos, which we appreciate.

A down payment assistance tool is particularly useful. You answer a series of seven questions, and it tells you what assistance programs may be available where you live. This is the first time we’ve seen such a resource. Impressive.

Zillow does not offer home equity products, even though you may see them on a sub-menu as a loan option.

For products not provided by Zillow Home Loans, the mortgage loan page will steer you to the Zillow marketplace, where many third-party lenders may receive your contact information and vie for your business.

The mortgage rates page at Zillow Home Loans shows the rates for available loan products.

To learn how the rates are determined, click on “See legal disclosures” at the top right of each section. That’s where you’ll learn that these aren’t Zillow Home Loan rates but averages from lenders in the Zillow marketplace. Conventional loans assume a 20% down payment and a 740 credit score.

Conforming loan rates are available for 30-, 20-, 15-, and 10-year fixed-rate loans. ARMs are available in 3-, 5-, and 7-year terms. Government loans show 30-year and 15-year fixed terms for FHA and VA mortgages. Jumbo loans show five options in fixed and adjustable rates.

Since there are so many lenders in the Zillow lending universe and because you don’t know which one you’ll end up with, it’s safe to say these rates are simply broad estimates.

Yahoo Finance uses 2024 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from almost 5,000 mortgage companies to score mortgage lenders on issued mortgage rates and total loan costs. We score each lender on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

For example, with mortgage rates, a lender with a lower score charged a higher-than-median mortgage interest rate for loans issued in 2024. A higher score would indicate a lender granted lower-than-median home loan interest rates to borrowers in 2024.

With total home loan costs, a lower score would indicate that a lender charged higher-than-median total home loan costs in 2024. A high rating would mean that a mortgage lender offered lower-than-median all-in home loan costs in 2024.

What this means: Zillow Home Loans offered a higher-than-median mortgage rate of 6.625% and a higher-than-median total loan cost of $6,714.82 to borrowers in 2024.

Zillow Home Loans gives you plenty of opportunities to jump into a home loan prequalification application. But this is where things get fuzzy. Depending on where you enter the workflow, you may see one of three different screens — and move through a different sales channel.

In the preapproval process, one screen begins by asking for your ZIP code. It says that your preapproval application will always be submitted to Zillow Home Loans, but perhaps to other lenders as well.

Another identical page except for one word offers to prequalify you for a mortgage loan.

A third entry point says you can prequalify in as little as three minutes. It, too, says you will be connected to “loan officers at Zillow Home Loans or from Zillow’s network of lenders.”

Whichever you choose — a quick but nonbinding prequalification or the more formal preapproval — it looks like you’ll be funneled to Zillow Home Loans and other lenders.

We found a dozen mortgage calculators on Zillow Home Loans, including:

Later, while looking to return to the calculator list, we got lost. It seems that once you get into a certain section of Zillow Home Loans, the footer menu changes, and the list of calculators disappears. We couldn’t even find a link to the calculators in the Learning Center, which was frustrating.

We did uncover — but didn’t test — an affordability tool. With the Zillow mobile app and BuyAbility, a home affordability calculation is updated with real-time interest rates, changes to your credit score, income, and down payment.

As you might expect, Zillow Home Loans also has an ample supply of timely, engaging, and informative articles on the mortgage loan process.

What determines mortgage rates? It’s complicated.

Rocket rose to fame as an online mortgage lender, and Zillow became famous for its home search capabilities. As services expand, Rocket shows homes, and Zillow offers loans. According to Yahoo Finance’s latest analysis, Rocket has slightly lower interest rates, and Zillow Home Loans have slightly lower loan costs. But neither one is a bargain.

Rocket has more loan choices. Both have excellent online learning resources. These tightly matched competitors are worth a look.

Rocket Mortgage review

Neither Zillow nor Better offers down payment assistance; however, Better has a wider range of home loans than Zillow, including home equity loans and HELOCs.

While Zillow Home Loans could gain even more traction with its combination of loans and homes, Better has a growing digital experience by tying in its mortgage offerings with insurance, real estate, and settlement services.

Better Mortgage review

According to Zillow’s website, a credit score of 620 is the minimum required for “most loan types.”

ZHL leans on its mortgage marketplace to provide this answer. It says that with all the paperwork submitted, “most lenders can process mortgage preapprovals in less than a day.” That may be optimistic.

Unlike many lenders, Zillow Home Loans does not do a hard credit check until you have accepted a loan offer and your application goes into underwriting.

Zillow Home Loans says it uses bank-level security encryption and will never resell your information.

Methodology:

Yahoo Finance reviews and scores mortgage lenders with quintile scoring in five primary categories: 1) Interest rates. Using 2024 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from almost 5,000 mortgage companies, we score mortgage lenders on issued mortgage rates below or above the annual median of reporting lenders. 2) Affordability. A measure of loan product availability and the willingness of a lender to offer government-backed loans, low down payments, down payment assistance, and consideration of nontraditional credit. 3) Loan costs. HMDA data is again analyzed, and lenders are rated based on total loan costs compared to the annual median. 4) Rate transparency. The ability of a website user to obtain a mortgage interest rate estimate. We score lenders based on whether rates are enhanced with discount points or high credit score requirements, disclaimers revealing rate assumptions, sample advertised rates, and whether adjustable or no discount point rate estimates are available. 5) Online features. An analysis of the educational material, calculators, and additional resources available to users.

Review of Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS) data on regulatory actions can trigger a penalty to the score of any lender with a consumer mortgage-related administrative or enforcement action within the past five years.

Advertisers or sponsorships do not influence ratings.

Editorial disclosure for mortgages:

The information in this article has not been reviewed or approved by any advertiser. The details on financial products, including interest rates and fees, are accurate as of the publish date. All products or services are presented without warranty. Check the lender’s website for the most current information. This site doesn’t include all currently available offers.

Laura Grace Tarpley edited this article.

 

error: Content is protected !!