Mortgage lenders have always been transparent to mortgage brokers or bankers with their rate sheets. Mortgage bankers/brokers have used the information supplied by the various mortgage lenders (ie: Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Citi, etc.) to price a loan to the ultimate mortgage borrower. Rate sheets are often confusing and difficult to read especially for a borrower and sometimes even for a mortgage broker/banker without a lot of experience. The transparency in the mortgage industry has not been at the lender level but to the borrower.

Even with the transparency from the lenders to the brokers/bankers there still remains an uneven playing field. Broker/bankers with little volume do not get the pricing breaks that large volume lenders receive thus NOT all bankers/brokers are created equal. Walmart is a classic example of volume discounts and it is not different in mortgage pricing to high volume brokers and bankers. Walmart buys in such huge quantities that the producers of the product are willing to work on a smaller margin of profit. Comparing Walmart to a local store trying to sell the same product would end up being more expensive at the small local store because their initial cost is higher. So it is with mortgages. Lenders make larger margins on small volume mortgage producers and lower margins on higher volume mortgage producers (called mortgage originators).

With all of the above being said there are essentially two layers of transparency, one from the lender to the brokers and bankers (not always equal in pricing) and then from the brokers and bankers to the borrower. The layer that has suffered in the past is the transparency from the brokers and bankers to the borrowers.

We built RateWindow for the consumer. So they can now shop the rates from with full rate disclosure.