The www.madrate.com site is apparently down, and now gives this message:

Madison First Financial, Inc. is no longer leasing this domain page and or website This Domain/Website is Property of Great White Marketing, Inc. If you are interested in leasing or purchasing this domain please contact Admin@greatwhitemarketing.com.

Have they gone out of business? The rest of the site is there if you type a link directly, including rates as of today (4/30/08):
https://www.madrate.com/preQualify.jsp

I was looking to get pre-qualified and they have the best 30 year fixed rates. Anybody have other info about whether they are out of business or if this s a hack of some sort? Any other suggestions for low-rate but reliable mortgage lenders?

Wow. Site was up this morning when I checked their rates. Maybe hackers?

Edit: This page still comes up. http://www.madrate.com/testimonials.jsp

They may have forgot to renew and someone snagged it up right away.

did you try calling them? or did you think that would ruin the deal?

I called their toll-free number and get a dialup beeping noise?!

Now it says this:

"Madison First Financial, Inc. is no longer leasing this domain page and or website This Domain/Website is Property of Great White Marketing, Inc. If you are interested in leasing or purchasing this domain please contact Admin@greatwhitemarketing.com."

with a nice shark image.

woah.. scary. I closed with them two months ago, and had the mortgage serviced by gmac in the end. I'm glad this didn't happen in the middle of that.

Sackajacka said:It may be just what the message says -- Madison First was leasing the domain name and the owners have revoked their rights... one would assume some sort of payment dispute.Web hosting is dirt cheap, if they can't afford to pay that bill they must really be in trouble.

jayK said:Sackajacka said:It may be just what the message says -- Madison First was leasing the domain name and the owners have revoked their rights... one would assume some sort of payment dispute.Web hosting is dirt cheap, if they can't afford to pay that bill they must really be in trouble.

You are correct, although if "Great White Marketing" were the site development company they could have other bills in arrears.

I don't think that is the case, though. If you look at any of the pages that are still up Example the footer says (C) 2007 Great White Marketing. This site indicates that the companies (Madrate and GWM) are one in the same. Note that this page is a wiki and editable by anyone, so it could be incorrect.

My assumption is that Madrate a/k/a GWM a/k/a Madison First Financial is closing the doors and they are trying to sell the domain name. The text on the home page is just a bit of spin if they are in fact one in the same.

Just my wild ass guess

Edit:

Interesting to note that the domain record for greatwhitemarketing.com was only created in Dec 2007.

Domain Name: GREATWHITEMARKETING.COM
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, INC.
Whois Server: whois.GoDaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.GoDaddy.com
Name Server: NS19.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS20.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 29-dec-2007
Creation Date: 29-dec-2007
Expiration Date: 29-dec-2008

Now that you mention that, I too have started getting a TON of spam, postal and Email. I do unique Email addresses with everyone though so it's easy to track, and easy to block once I'm done with that service so I stopped the Emails but postal mail is still coming in under their solitications.