My guess is that if you are reading this, you are at least considering doing something that involves your mortgage. The purpose of this post is to talk about just a few of the ways that you can use Twitter to shop for a mortgage to make sure that you are working with a solid loan officer and getting a great “deal” on your mortgage.

Here is just a few ways that  you can leverage Twitter when shopping for a mortgage:

Listen to what is generally being said about mortgages.

Use search.twitter.com and search a few “mortgage” keywords. Try searching for words like “mortgage” or “loan officer” and see who is saying what about mortgages. The search.twitter.com feature will show you all kinds of “mortgage related” discussions being had – from short rants about loan officers or short endorsements of loan officers to loan officers talking about clients or loan officers talking about their personal lives to people commenting on “problems with subprime mortgages”.

Listen to what a particular loan officer is saying.

Once you have searched on the word “mortgage” or a general mortgage related term, you can pretty easily identify who is a consumer talking about a mortgage and who is a loan officer who is talking about mortgage related topics.

Loan officers just generally have a way of standing out once you know what to look for. Some loan officers might give out information about specific mortgage quotes they are working on or some loan officers might be commenting on the mortgage bond market  throughout the day – but no matter how they try to hide it… you can spot a “mortgage person” a mile away when you start looking for them and listen to what they talk about.

Listen to what people are saying about a particular loan officer.

Thinking of working with a loan officer that you “found” on Twitter? You can easily find out what people are saying about him – both good and bad. One of the nice (and scary) things about Twitter is that it allows people to say pretty much anything as long as they do it in 140 characters or less.

Is it possible that a loan officer that you are considering after submitting a mortgage quote turns out to be “less-than-the-ideal-type-of-loan-officer-that-you-want-to-work-with” when you see the results of your Twitter search?

Of course it is.

It is also possible to find out that your original second choice of a loan officer to work with might vault to the top of the list based on what people are talking about or what he is talking about on Twitter.

Announce that you are “interested in a mortgage” using Twitter.

I haven’t done this, but I wonder what would happen if you actually went in to twitter and said something like “I need help with a mortgage”.

Try it!

After you have filled out your information for a mortgage quote of course – there is little use just talking about a mortgage randomly unless you can get very specific about your particular situation and there is no better place on the web right here on Zillow.

I bet within a relatively short period of time, you have at least one conversation going about “mortgage-related” stuff.

In my opinion, using Twitter would be a complementary way to shop for a mortgage along with Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace. If you first filled out your information on Zillow, you can easily use search.twitter.com to learn more about lenders who may be submitting bids for your loan.

Want to double-check the feedback that you see on Zillow about a particular lender or maybe you are just not sure if you believe that a particular loan officer really gives great service and has low rates?

See what people are saying about them on Twitter just by searching on their Twitter handle.

Not on Twitter yet?

Hurry, before everyone else beats you there.

This post was originally posted on Zillow’s Mortgages Unzipped – and was reposted here at the request of someone who thought it may be helpful to spread the word about “another productive way to use Twitter!”