Ing Direct bank's MoveOutMoveUp.com website is clearly a marketing tool designed to get you to shop its mortgages and other banking services.

That's business.

However, with today's housing market revealing so many conditions that give cause to pause, MoveOutMoveUp.com is a nice place to step in to get out of the rain of gloom, mull things over, sip some Joe and have a little bit of fun while you are at it.

Serving up the website, is the Netherlands-based Ing Group's Ing Direct bank, headquartered in Wilmington, DE and offering a relatively unique spin on banking.

Mostly click, but also mortar, the bank offers the typical array of consumer loans and investments including mortgages, but makes them available primarily online, over the phone and by mail.

Savings from reduced overhead costs are passed onto customers in the form of high interest rate savings and certificates of deposit investments and competitive mortgage rates and costs.

The company also spends their savings on a handful of free-Internet cafes in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Wilmington.

In a partnership with Peet's Coffee & Tea, the cafes also host a series of home buying and mortgage education seminars, some of which include guest speakers, who are experts in some facet of home financing.

Ing's unique approach to attracting customers is most evident on it's video-heavy MoveOutMoveUp.com website.

It's designed to playfully prod apartment dwellers to well, move out and move up.

Beginning with an opening screen shot of a four story apartment building on a busy street in the foreground and a sanguine single-family home off in the distance, the Web site is a series of games designed to generate chuckles to make points.

• "Oh, Baby" is a video that reveals how cramped it can get when a baby is born to a family living in cramped quarters. Getting baby and a week's worth of groceries up the elevator is no laughing matter for those who actually must perform the task.

• "Bad Neighbors" are everywhere, but in high-density living they are often in your face. This feature lets you choose your neighbors, but then you've got to keep the party girl, the creep, the crying baby, the always half-dressed neighbor and a host of others at bay without climbing the walls. It's not easy.

• "Moving In Together" can really stink, especially if the bath is a few steps from the kitchen table. Also if you can't remember whose stuff is whose, this is an opportunity to sort it all out.

• "Move Up" isn't really a game, but the image of that single-family home, which is always available off in the distance, but never out of reach. The house links you to help determining how much home you can afford, to information about checking your credit, to help finding a real estate agent and to those other initial steps you should take in your initial efforts to move out and up to your own home.

Again, MoveOutMoveUp.com is a marketing tool, but that doesn't mean you have to buy an Ing mortgage or other financial service to have a little fun and get some basic home buying information for the effort.

Unlike so many other marketing websites, you don't have to sign up and log in to hang out. Just turn off your Web browser's cookies and give it a whirl.

"Site To See" is a series of reviews or critiques of content-heavy real estate websites deemed unique, consumer-friendly, informative and easy to use.

Published: January 2, 2007

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.