Education and advisory services are not simply a significant component for any home loan related vendor but have become essential, according to a new consumer survey conducted by Home Loan Hints, at a time when consumers say they cannot trust most of the home loan advice on offer.

The survey showed that consumers do not want to be misled or overloaded with information, said Fabian Di Marco Online Marketing Leader at Home Loans Hints, an independent and interactive service providing consumers with access to information.

"The analysis indicates that people are well aware of the sales intent of assistance on home loan provider and real estate websites. This puts Home Loan Hints in a unique position to offer consumers a true solution, being a purely educational consumer website," said Mr Di Marco.

The survey also found that most consumers found the home loan industry to be confusing, overcrowded and crippled by information overload.

"Even though consumers demand educational products and services; and have access to them via broker or bank staff or by conducting their own research via industry websites, overall they are not satisfied with what is available," said Mr Di Marco.

The survey revealed that while a small portion (14 per cent) of the respondents were very satisfied with the advice they received, a far larger proportion (41 per cent) said they did not trust the advice they received.

In addition, only a meager 4.8 per cent reported being very satisfied with bank websites, while even less (3.3 per cent) found real estate websites to be satisfying.

When asked what factors might prevent consumers from seeking advice from a mortgage broker, home loan manager or from bank staff, a full 48 per cent said they could "not afford" professional advice. At 41.6 per cent the next highest impediment was wariness at receiving a biased response.

According to Mr Di Marco, this reflected a need to provide an inexpensive or free service to provide "no-strings" assistance. "The industry has flooded consumers with information - so much so that the basic need for simple straight-forward advice has been overshadowed," he said.

Some real estate and banking websites provide home loan help along with tools like calculators. However, when asked about the effectiveness of these provisions the response was mostly negative, with 51.7 per cent of respondents concerned that websites provided biased advice.

Meanwhile, an overwhelmingly high 71 per cent of respondents answered "extremely important" when asked how important it was that they knew that the advice they received had no strings attached.

According to Mr Di Marco this consumer wariness of biased advice was the most distinguishable trend in the survey.

"To this end Home Loan Hints aims to remain unbiased with its service of providing answers to consumers. Consumers have identified that they want advice that is easily and quickly accessible, unbiased and free. Face-to-face meetings are no longer as important for information gathering as they once were. Our results show this traditional means is no longer an essential component in the information delivery phase," he said.

The survey revealed that while 31.3 per cent of females found it extremely important to obtain advice from a face-to-face meeting, they were also the most likely group to seek online advice and trust this advice. The survey found that males held a general mistrust of any advice offered.

The survey also found other interesting trends. Of those looking for a home loan, 39.4 per cent were first home buyers and 25.8 per cent were second (or greater) home buyers. Among these 58 per cent were females and 37.5 per cent of those were looking for first homes.

Mr Di Marco said that while the biggest trend in active seekers was the female first home buyer group, it was evident that all consumers wanted free, unbiased and accessible home loan advice that they could trust.