Visbl Brings Transparency to Home Financing

Why is it that you have to pick up the phone and call me to find out what your interest rate is? But I can travel to any airport in any city around the world instantly with a push of a search button.

says Abe Lee, CEO and Founder of Visbl, a company reimagining how consumers shop for mortgages.

In an industry often criticized for its opacity and complexity, Visbl is bringing the transparency and convenience of travel booking platforms to the mortgage space. The company’s universal mortgage shopping app allows consumers to compare loan options side-by-side in real dollars—not confusing APRs—without surrendering their personal information to lead-generation funnels.

From Mortgage Veteran to Industry Disruptor

Lee’s journey began with extensive experience in the lending space. After working for some of the country’s top lenders, he founded his own lending institution, Nakoma Mortgage Company, in 2007. Throughout his career, he consistently sought ways to improve the mortgage shopping experience.

The inspiration for Visbl came from an unexpected source: his daughter’s success on the US National Taekwondo team. As the family traveled internationally for competitions, Lee was struck by the contrast between his ability to instantly book travel arrangements from anywhere in the world and the outdated process his mortgage clients faced.

On those same travels, our customers would call us, or my team would call me and say, ‘Hey, can you tell me about the rates today? Can you tell me about my loan status today? In my head, I was always wondering, why is it that you have to pick up the phone and call me to find out what your interest rate is?

Lee envisioned a platform where consumers could enter basic information—purchase location, down payment amount, estimated credit score—and instantly receive accurate, transparent mortgage offers from multiple lenders, just as they could with flights or hotels.

Breaking the Lead Funnel Model

The traditional online mortgage shopping experience typically funnels consumers into lead-generation systems. Potential borrowers enter extensive personal information only to receive no immediate answers—just a barrage of calls and emails from eager loan officers.

The typical customer would go on the internet, and they would search ‘best 30-year fixed mortgage,’ and they would be offered a handful of sites. Then they would go down this list of 20 questions… And then they would hit Search, and then that institution would say, ‘Thank you very much. We’re not going to offer you any information, but we’re going to have 50 guys start emailing you and calling you because you’ve now entered the lead funnel.

Visbl takes a fundamentally different approach. The platform allows consumers to shop anonymously without providing sensitive personal information like social security numbers. Users can explore different scenarios—adjusting down payment amounts, purchase prices, or lender options—without triggering a flood of solicitations.

Our market research shows that consumers spend hours on Visbl. Once they come through the entire platform, and they’ve shopped and compared and they’re down to the penny with what they want, when they hit ‘apply,’ that originator that received that on the other end of that push button, all they have to do is deliver the product. They’re not one of 60 competing to try and win a lead.

Dollars vs. APR: Simplifying Mortgage Comparison

One of Visbl’s most significant innovations is how it presents mortgage options to consumers. Rather than relying on Annual Percentage Rate (APR), a complex calculation that even industry professionals struggle to explain, Visbl shows comparisons in simple dollar amounts.

Our industry has been shopping in APR. We have been telling the customer they need to understand what an APR is, outside of myself, I don’t know too many other guys that could actually hand-write the calculation for an APR. Even the guys in the business… Even if I show them what I did, they still don’t understand what it means.

By converting complex mortgage terms into straightforward dollar comparisons, Visbl makes it possible for anyone to understand their options.

Any fifth grader can go on the platform and say, ‘Mom wants to buy a house in this city for this amount, her credit looks like this,’ hit Search, and it will show them how to compare side by side with every lender out there in dollars.

This approach accommodates different borrower priorities. An investor looking for a short-term loan might prioritize lower points over interest rate, while a retiree seeking their “forever loan”might prefer the lowest possible rate even if it means higher upfront costs. Visbl allows consumers to see these tradeoffs clearly and make informed decisions based on their specific needs.

The Technology Behind the Transparency

While Lee is careful not to reveal proprietary details about Visbl’s patented and patent-pending processes, he explains the fundamental concept using an analogy to shoe manufacturing.

Just as a major shoe brand might manufacture the same model in different factories worldwide while maintaining consistent specifications, mortgage-backed securities must meet standardized guidelines regardless of which lender originates them. Visbl’s technology takes these standardized mortgage products from different sources—lenders, correspondents, or brokers—factors in their margins and third-party vendor costs, and calculates a single, comprehensive figure for the consumer.

The complex part of what we did was we took that dollar from different manufacturers or different originator sources, whether it’s a lender or a correspondent or a broker, allowed them to tie in their margins, connected the third-party vendors to them, and then put it through the end of a giant calculator that spits it out for the consumer in a single number.

A Win-Win for Consumers and Lenders

Visbl’s approach benefits both sides of the mortgage transaction. Consumers gain transparency and control over their mortgage shopping experience without being treated as leads to be monetized. Meanwhile, lenders receive highly qualified applicants who have already done their research and made their decision.

When a consumer hits “apply”on Visbl, the loan officer receives the application in a universal 3.4 MISMO format that integrates with any loan origination system. At this point, the formal application process begins, with the loan officer collecting the necessary documentation and issuing disclosures.

They haven’t received [the loan], they book it. Now, on the other end, the loan officer receives that booking and says, ‘Hey, I received your booking.’ It’s downloaded in a 3.4 MISMO format. So it’s universal. It goes into any LOS that they’re working in, pulls in, and all they have to do now is deliver.

Looking Ahead: Nationwide Expansion

Visbl officially launched nationwide on June 2, offering conventional, government (FHA, VA, USDA), and jumbo loan products. The company is currently operating in 29 states and aims to expand to all 50 states by the end of the year.

The roadmap includes adding more banks, brokers, loan officers, and third-party vendors like escrow, title, and appraisal services to create a comprehensive mortgage shopping ecosystem.

For an industry often criticized for its lack of transparency and predatory practices, Visbl represents a significant advancement toward consumer empowerment. By bringing the ease and transparency of travel booking to mortgage shopping, Lee and his team are addressing longstanding issues in the lending process.

The mortgage or the lending industry has been accused of very bad things over history, whether it’s redlining or predatory lending, or subprime loans. We’re sitting here looking at, how do we avoid those things? How do we make sure that we’re fully compliant with Truth in Lending and RESPA and advertising practices? And the obvious answer is to just be transparent.