Latest news with #VarunKrishna
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Mortgage giant buys real estate leader, offers cheaper mortgages
The past few years have been brutal for home-buyers. Prices have skyrocketed in desirable locations as populations shifted during the Covid pandemic. Once affordable markets like Florida saw prices climb as people decided to move to warm weather locations. Related: Dave Ramsey has blunt words for Americans buying a car The logic appeared to be that if people were going to be spending a lot more time at home due to social distancing, than they might as well live someplace where the weather was good. At the same time, prices in major northern cities may have dipped a little, but over the past could of years they recovered and climbed. On top of expensive inventory, mortgage rates have skyrocketed since being consistently sub-3% in 2020. Current rates sit at 6.77% for a 30-year fixed mortgage as of June 26. It's a double whammy that means that many houses have become unaffordable to the vast majority of Americans. If interest rates dropped, buying power would increase, but it that happened across the board, housing prices might jump as well. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter If, however, some buyers can lock-in a mortgage at a lower rate, even if it's just for a limited period, that could be the edge they need to have an advantage over other buyers. A new giant player in the housing space wants to help make that happen. A few years ago, it seemed like giant online real estate companies led by Zillow and Redfin would take a major share of the real estate market. Both seemed poised to disrupt the existing system of local Realtors, but that never really happened. The reality is that for many people, buying a house was about relationships. Many home-buyers had a Realtor they trusted. Yes, Zillow and Redfin promised lower commissions, but even though the offered agents to work with buyers, it was just not the same. Both Zillow and Redfin sort of stalled out and never really became the giants many thought they could be. Both at good for real estate browsing. If you like looking at new homes and imagining buying them, either site worked well, but actual buying still stayed largely with local Realtors. More on personal finance: Dave Ramsey offers urgent thoughts about MedicareJean Chatzky shares major statement on Social SecurityTony Robbins has blunt words on IRAs,401(k)s In March, mortgage giant Rocket Mortgage (RKT) , a fintech platform consisting of mortgage, real estate and personal finance businesses, entered into an agreement to purchase Redfin, a leading digital real estate brokerage. In the all-stock deal Rocket Mortgage agreed to pay $12.50 per Redfin share or $1.75 billion of equity value. "Founded in 2004, Redfin is one of America's most recognized real estate brands, operating a top-three home search platform with more than 1 million for-sale and rental listings and a tech-powered brokerage of more than 2,200 agents," the company's shared in a press release. Rocket CEO Varun Krishna explained the logic of the purchase. "Rocket and Redfin have a unified vision of a better way to buy and sell homes. Together, we will improve the experience by connecting traditionally disparate steps of the search and financing process with leading technology that removes friction, reduces costs and increases value to American homebuyers." he said. That's pretty much what every company that's trying to disrupt the status quo in real estate has said over the years. Rocket Mortgage closed the Redfin deal on July 1, which Krishna celebrated "I've used Redfin every day for the last 20 years. It helped me find and fall in love with my first home, completely changing how I thought about real estate. The Redfin team is best-in-class in building a product experience focused on simplicity. It was a perfect fit for Rocket's vision of what the homeownership experience should be," he shared. The newly combined company is offering cheaper mortgages as an incentive to attract new customers, which it's calling Rocket Preferred Pricing. Related: Google's quiet AI win spells trouble for Amazon "Clients who finance their home through Rocket Mortgage and buy a home listed by a Redfin agent or purchase with the help of a Redfin agent will have a one percentage point reduction in their interest rate for the first year of their loan or receive a lender credit at closing, up to $6,000," the company shared. .Rocket Preferred Pricing is available to qualified clients buying a home with conventional, FHA or VA loans. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Rocket Companies completes purchase of Redfin
Rocket Companies announced Tuesday that it has closed on its previously announced $1.75 billion deal for real estate brokerage Redfin, a deal that combines Redfin's home search platform with Detroit-based Rocket's mortgage lending. "I've used Redfin every day for the last 20 years. It helped me find and fall in love with my first home, completely changing how I thought about real estate," Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies said in a statement Tuesday. "The Redfin team is best-in-class at building simple, intuitive experiences - perfectly aligned with Rocket's vision for the future of homeownership." Founded in 2004, Seattle-based Redfin features more than 1 million for-sale and rental listings, draws nearly 50 million monthly visitors and operates a brokerage with more than 2,200 real estate agents nationwide. Redfin's web site Tuesday showed a revamped brand identity with the tagline "Redfin Powered by Rocket." "The gulf between the American Dream of homeownership and the reality has never been wider," Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin said in a statement. "The reason Rocket and Redfin came together was to bridge that gap - so the people who spend their days dreaming on can more easily use Rocket to turn those dreams into reality." Earlier this year, Rocket announced that it would acquire Redfin in an all-stock deal - one of two acquisitions expected for Rocket this year. The second is mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper Group Inc., which is expected to be an all-stock deal worth $9.4 billion. The acquisition has long-term potential, though the timing may present some short-term challenges, said Tim Nash, vice president emeritus and director of the McNair Center at Northwood University. "Currently, home sales are in a slump - the worst period in at least seven years for new and used home sales," he said. "Interest rates are high, and the economy seems to be slowing." Nash said Rocket is making a strategic play by acquiring Redfin's online tools and brand, as opposed to paying the expense to expand internally. The result could be a better experience for Rocket and Redfin consumers. "They are going to benefit from a lot of the greater online capacity, greater web presence that they'll incorporate from Redfin into Rocket," he said. "So the average customer should get more information and be better, more quickly served with a lot more information." To mark the occasion, the companies introduced Rocket Preferred Pricing. Clients who finance their home through Rocket Mortgage and purchase a home listed by a Redfin agent or with the help of a Redfin agent will have a 1% interest rate reduction for the first year or receive a lender credit at closing, up to $6,000. Rocket and Redfin officials said they plan to launch additional products for homebuyers, real estate agents and mortgage brokers in the coming months. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
RKT Q1 Deep Dive: Revenue Miss, AI and Acquisitions Anchor Strategy Amid Housing Headwinds
Fintech mortgage provider Rocket Companies (NYSE:RKT) missed Wall Street's revenue expectations in Q1 CY2025, with sales falling 25% year on year to $1.04 billion. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.04 per share was in line with analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy RKT? Find out in our full research report (it's free). Revenue: $1.04 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.22 billion (25% year-on-year decline, 15.2% miss) Adjusted EPS: $0.04 vs analyst estimates of $0.04 (in line) Adjusted EBITDA: $169 million vs analyst estimates of $158.7 million (16.3% margin, 6.5% beat) Market Capitalization: $2.22 billion Rocket Companies experienced a challenging first quarter, with results falling short of Wall Street revenue expectations and the stock responding negatively. Management attributed the underperformance to a combination of higher mortgage rates, increased market volatility following tariff announcements, and declining consumer sentiment that led to delayed home purchases. CEO Varun Krishna described April as an 'unusual reversal' compared to early-year momentum, highlighting that weekly purchase applications declined at a rate not seen since 2009. Despite these headwinds, Krishna emphasized operational improvements and AI-driven efficiency gains, including a 21% year-over-year increase in origination clients in March and notable cost reductions from new automation tools. Looking ahead, Rocket Companies is focusing on integrating its pending acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper to create an end-to-end homeownership platform, with management emphasizing the strategic value of combining real estate search, origination, and servicing capabilities. CFO Brian Brown outlined expectations for a gradual market rebound as volatility subsides, with a particular focus on efficiency through AI and automation to expand origination capacity and control costs. Krishna stated that, '2025 will be evolutionary on a path for 2026 to be revolutionary,' underscoring plans to leverage a larger data ecosystem and improved client experiences to drive future growth, even as near-term market conditions remain uncertain. Management pointed to volatile market conditions and AI-enabled productivity improvements as critical contributors to first quarter results, alongside major strategic moves including proposed acquisitions. Interest rate and market volatility: Management highlighted that the spike in mortgage rates—from 6.6% to nearly 7% during April—combined with new tariffs and equity market swings, led to a sharp drop in home buying activity and reduced consumer willingness to take on large financial commitments. AI-driven operational gains: Rocket Companies deployed new agentic AI tools to automate complex, manual tasks such as transfer tax identification and call analysis, which cut remediation costs and improved banker productivity. CEO Varun Krishna noted a projected $1 million in annual savings from one such deployment, and a tenfold increase in call coaching efficiency. Broker channel enhancements: The launch of a redesigned Rocket Pro dashboard, integration with the Arrive platform, and additional digital tools improved broker engagement and efficiency. Management reported that broker usage of key resources grew by 30% following these updates, and over 300 brokers engaged with Rocket for the first time within days of launch. Affordability and homebuyer programs: The introduction of programs like RentRewards and 1-0 Rate Break aimed to lower barriers for first-time buyers, driving a double-digit increase in retail purchase clients with locked loans. These initiatives reflect the company's response to persistent affordability concerns in the housing market. Strategic acquisitions and platform vision: The announced acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper are intended to create an integrated platform covering search, financing, and servicing. Management stressed that this combination will expand Rocket's data assets, professional network, and client reach, with the goal of improving customer retention and cross-selling opportunities. Rocket Companies expects its path forward to be shaped by the integration of acquisitions, continued investment in AI, and responses to shifting housing market dynamics. Integration of Redfin and Mr. Cooper: Management views the combination as central to building a comprehensive homeownership platform, aiming to balance origination and servicing revenue streams and create new cross-sell opportunities. Successful integration is expected to enhance scale and data capabilities, but also carries execution risk as multiple workstreams come together. AI and automation for scalability: Ongoing investments in agentic AI are designed to expand origination capacity without proportional increases in fixed costs. Management believes this 'infinite capacity' approach can provide operating leverage, allowing for cost savings if mortgage volumes remain subdued, or scalable growth if demand returns. Housing market uncertainties: The company acknowledges that macroeconomic volatility, consumer caution, and ongoing interest rate fluctuations could continue to suppress home buying activity. However, management is monitoring market trends closely and expects a potential rebound later in the year, with the flexibility to adjust costs if conditions do not improve. In future quarters, the StockStory team will be watching (1) the pace and effectiveness of Redfin and Mr. Cooper integration, (2) evidence that AI and automation are delivering sustainable capacity expansion and cost efficiencies, and (3) early signs of recovery in home buying activity as market volatility stabilizes. Execution on affordability programs and further broker channel growth will also be important markers. Rocket Companies currently trades at $14.80, up from $11.64 just before the earnings. In the wake of this quarter, is it a buy or sell? The answer lies in our full research report (it's free). The market surged in 2024 and reached record highs after Donald Trump's presidential victory in November, but questions about new economic policies are adding much uncertainty for 2025. While the crowd speculates what might happen next, we're homing in on the companies that can succeed regardless of the political or macroeconomic environment. Put yourself in the driver's seat and build a durable portfolio by checking out our Top 5 Strong Momentum Stocks for this week. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 183% over the last five years (as of March 31st 2025). Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Tecnoglass (+1,754% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today. Sign in to access your portfolio
USA Today
10-06-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Rocket Mortgage is buying Redfin. We got the CEOs to break it down.
Rocket Mortgage is buying Redfin. We got the CEOs to break it down. Show Caption Hide Caption How to clean your carpet and rugs properly Rugs and carpets can trap odors. Here's how to clean them properly. ProblemSolved, Reviewed In March, Rocket, America's largest mortgage lender, announced plans to buy Redfin, a national brokerage that's spent its 20-year history trying to 'redefine' residential real estate. There are big numbers involved: Redfin's website attracts nearly 50 million views every month; Rocket says it handles more than 100,000 calls every day. The deal is worth nearly $1.75 billion. But Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman and Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies, say the consumer is at the heart of the deal. 'Homeownership is fundamentally a human business,' Krishna said during a May investor call. Still, the tie-up comes at an auspicious time. As USA TODAY has reported, there are deep fissures in the industry about how much control any one company should have over how real estate listings are shared publicly and who should represent buyers and sellers. At the same time, higher-for-longer mortgage rates and elevated home prices are fraying the American Dream, and making profits and margins challenging, as Kelman memorably noted in a 2024 call with analysts. USA TODAY sat down with Krishna and Kelman for one of their first joint appearances since the announcement. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. USA TODAY: What does the acquisition mean for consumers in the housing market, for buyers and sellers? Varun Krishna: Today when you think about the process of buying or selling a home, the consumer sort of gets handed off from industry to industry to industry. One industry helps them with the process of searching for a home and working with a realtor, another industry helps them with the process of financing. Within that, there are industries that help them with things like title, insurance and then they get kind of handed off into the servicing business where they spend a lifetime handling things like property taxes, their monthly payments and their escrows. And the whole process is just so complicated. It takes time, it takes energy, it's expensive. What we want to do is fix that. We want to take something that is expensive, manual, and antiquated, and we just want to make it all seamless and frictionless, and ultimately create more savings and value for the Kelman: The central economic problem that people under 40 have is that they don't believe in the American Dream anymore. They can't afford a house, they get lost in the process, they get overwhelmed by the fees. They're spending half their down payment on the broker and the banker. And I do think we can fix that. USA TODAY: The start-to-finish real estate experience has been a Holy Grail for a long time. We've all been saying for decades that it's antiquated. And at this particular moment in time, there's a lot of spirited debate in the industry over how much of the process any one company should control. You have one big player in the market saying that they want to have the listings in-house and they want to be able to represent both sides of the transaction. And there have long been questions about how much any professional should be able to steer business to others. We want consumers to get professional help but how do you walk that line between wanting them to also be able to choose who represents them? Krishna: The problem with the homeownership experience is that there isn't any transparency. It's difficult to figure out whether the realtor that you work with has your best interest. It's difficult to know that you're getting the best rate. It's difficult to understand where you stand in the process, how underwriting works. It's difficult to understand how your loan gets licensed and then serviced and then passed off to another I think the fundamental issue today is there's an illusion of control, that there's any choice at all. And that the fee structures make sense, and the way that the consumers have to choose and what they get to choose… it's a little bit of a fallacy today and we want to improve that.I mean, that is our fundamental ethos is exactly that consumers deserve better. They deserve a system that is more transparent, they deserve to have better rates, they deserve to pay lower fees, they deserve to be able to get into a home faster or sell a home For me, it's really hard to give the consumer a better deal when the title company, the broker, the banker, and the servicing company are all fighting for the customer. We're going to give customers a choice. They can work with a Redfin agent, and then a different banker. They can work with a Rocket banker and then a different agent. But our hope is that by working together, we can give the consumer such a better experience and such a lower fee that what they'll want to do is work with us. But if you keep these industries at each other's throats, where we're all spending money to get the same customer, you're never going to make the industry more efficient. And that's why the consumer is still paying so much every time she moves. USA TODAY: There has been a lot of experimentation, a lot of companies spending a lot of money on big bets, you know, Redfin starting with salaried agents, the iBuyers like Opendoor that buy homes directly from owners, Zillow Offers. Why is it so hard to get the model right? Kelman: I think the consumer is really traditional. It's an infrequent purchase, so once a decade you move and usually you call on a neighbor to help you handle the sale, or you hire your uncle as a real estate agent. Also it's a cooperative industry. So anytime you have a disruptor, the consumer has to worry. When she puts a Redfin sign in her yard, will other buyer agents want to show that listing? You have to worry when you have a RE/MAX agent representing the buyer: will other listing agents really tell that agent what's going on in the deal? Any time there has been a disruptor, there has been an industry reaction and so the challenge here is finding a way to take a very fragmented industry and make it work together better. Krishna: I think part of the reason these things are hard is when you disrupt any kind of hyper-local dynamic, whether it's commerce, real estate, or financial services, you have local fragmentation, word of mouth. You have a diversity in the landscape of how people do this job, where some people sell one or two homes and others take it as a full-time profession. You have varying levels of I just think that most of the companies building technologies in this industry don't actually want to get their hands dirty and serve the customer directly. The first thing Varun and I had in common was just that we wanted to put the consumer first, but the second was that both of us have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our people. And in most of the industry, if you build a better gadget, you sell leads to a traditional agent or to a traditional loan officer. For us, it just seems hard to build a better mousetrap, have the world beat a path to your door, and then give people the same old service at the same old TODAY: There's a lot of concern about some of the buyers who have purchased recently with rates at cycle highs and very high home prices. While the vast majority do have fixed-rate mortgages, we know that homeowners insurance costs are rising pretty dramatically, pretty quickly. Property taxes are also likely to rise. How concerned are you about those borrowers from the perspective of the borrower? And how concerned are you, or how sanguine are you, about the mortgage servicing system being able to manage if we do see an uptick in distress? Krishna: We watch the trends like hawks and we look at everything from leading indicators to lagging indicators on how consumers are spending. Typically the mortgage is the last thing to go, so consumers will do anything and everything to make sure that they stay in their homes. I would say given everything we've seen too far, we're not worried in the sense that we see, you know, deep structural cracks in the way that the industry is developing. But at the same time, we know affordability is a challenge. Inventory is a challenge and we also know that there's still a significant amount of friction in the entire experience as well. We need to start thinking of it as a continuum, where a consumer will progress from renting to eventually ending up in a home which is still the bedrock of the American dream. And if we can help them with that from a lifetime perspective or we can help them not just search and find a home, but to be able to finance it, title it and then service it, we can take a lot of cost out of the system. Part of the problem today is that when you think about the expense, a lot of it goes into things like lead acquisition, right? Mortgage leads are one of the most expensive leads and mortgage companies spend thousands of dollars on individual leads. The margins end up being a little bit low because of that. And then there's no lifetime value because the consumer is in a different part of the funnel for servicing. We can make it faster. This is our approach to saying this is how we want to help fix the problem and to create a model that we think is more sustainable as far as homeownership is concerned. More: As real estate listings become more private, Zillow fights back
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mortgage company Rocket is buying Redfin, the brokerage. Its CEOs talked with USA Today.
In March, Rocket, America's largest mortgage lender, announced plans to buy Redfin, a national brokerage that's spent its 20-year history trying to 'redefine' residential real estate. There are big numbers involved: Redfin's website attracts nearly 50 million views every month; Rocket says it handles more than 100,000 calls every day. The deal is worth nearly $1.75 billion. But Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman and Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies, say the consumer is at the heart of the deal. 'Homeownership is fundamentally a human business,' Krishna said during a May investor call. Still, the tie-up comes at an auspicious time. As USA TODAY has reported, there are deep fissures in the industry about how much control any one company should have over how real estate listings are shared publicly and who should represent buyers and sellers. At the same time, higher-for-longer mortgage rates and elevated home prices are fraying the American Dream, and making profits and margins challenging, as Kelman memorably noted in a 2024 call with analysts. USA TODAY sat down with Krishna and Kelman for one of their first joint appearances since the announcement. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. USA TODAY: What does the acquisition mean for consumers in the housing market, for buyers and sellers? Varun Krishna: Today when you think about the process of buying or selling a home, the consumer sort of gets handed off from industry to industry to industry. One industry helps them with the process of searching for a home and working with a realtor, another industry helps them with the process of financing. Within that, there are industries that help them with things like title, insurance and then they get kind of handed off into the servicing business where they spend a lifetime handling things like property taxes, their monthly payments and their escrows. And the whole process is just so complicated. It takes time, it takes energy, it's expensive. What we want to do is fix that. We want to take something that is expensive, manual, and antiquated, and we just want to make it all seamless and frictionless, and ultimately create more savings and value for the Kelman: The central economic problem that people under 40 have is that they don't believe in the American Dream anymore. They can't afford a house, they get lost in the process, they get overwhelmed by the fees. They're spending half their down payment on the broker and the banker. And I do think we can fix that. USA TODAY: The start-to-finish real estate experience has been a Holy Grail for a long time. We've all been saying for decades that it's antiquated. And at this particular moment in time, there's a lot of spirited debate in the industry over how much of the process any one company should control. You have one big player in the market saying that they want to have the listings in-house and they want to be able to represent both sides of the transaction. And there have long been questions about how much any professional should be able to steer business to others. We want consumers to get professional help but how do you walk that line between wanting them to also be able to choose who represents them? Krishna: The problem with the homeownership experience is that there isn't any transparency. It's difficult to figure out whether the realtor that you work with has your best interest. It's difficult to know that you're getting the best rate. It's difficult to understand where you stand in the process, how underwriting works. It's difficult to understand how your loan gets licensed and then serviced and then passed off to another I think the fundamental issue today is there's an illusion of control, that there's any choice at all. And that the fee structures make sense, and the way that the consumers have to choose and what they get to choose… it's a little bit of a fallacy today and we want to improve that.I mean, that is our fundamental ethos is exactly that consumers deserve better. They deserve a system that is more transparent, they deserve to have better rates, they deserve to pay lower fees, they deserve to be able to get into a home faster or sell a home For me, it's really hard to give the consumer a better deal when the title company, the broker, the banker, and the servicing company are all fighting for the customer. We're going to give customers a choice. They can work with a Redfin agent, and then a different banker. They can work with a Rocket banker and then a different agent. But our hope is that by working together, we can give the consumer such a better experience and such a lower fee that what they'll want to do is work with us. But if you keep these industries at each other's throats, where we're all spending money to get the same customer, you're never going to make the industry more efficient. And that's why the consumer is still paying so much every time she moves. USA TODAY: There has been a lot of experimentation, a lot of companies spending a lot of money on big bets, you know, Redfin starting with salaried agents, the iBuyers like Opendoor that buy homes directly from owners, Zillow Offers. Why is it so hard to get the model right? Kelman: I think the consumer is really traditional. It's an infrequent purchase, so once a decade you move and usually you call on a neighbor to help you handle the sale, or you hire your uncle as a real estate agent. Also it's a cooperative industry. So anytime you have a disruptor, the consumer has to worry. When she puts a Redfin sign in her yard, will other buyer agents want to show that listing? You have to worry when you have a RE/MAX agent representing the buyer: will other listing agents really tell that agent what's going on in the deal? Any time there has been a disruptor, there has been an industry reaction and so the challenge here is finding a way to take a very fragmented industry and make it work together better. Krishna: I think part of the reason these things are hard is when you disrupt any kind of hyper-local dynamic, whether it's commerce, real estate, or financial services, you have local fragmentation, word of mouth. You have a diversity in the landscape of how people do this job, where some people sell one or two homes and others take it as a full-time profession. You have varying levels of I just think that most of the companies building technologies in this industry don't actually want to get their hands dirty and serve the customer directly. The first thing Varun and I had in common was just that we wanted to put the consumer first, but the second was that both of us have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our people. And in most of the industry, if you build a better gadget, you sell leads to a traditional agent or to a traditional loan officer. For us, it just seems hard to build a better mousetrap, have the world beat a path to your door, and then give people the same old service at the same old TODAY: There's a lot of concern about some of the buyers who have purchased recently with rates at cycle highs and very high home prices. While the , we know that homeowners , pretty quickly. Property taxes are also likely to rise. How concerned are you about those borrowers from the perspective of the borrower? And how concerned are you, or how sanguine are you, about the mortgage servicing system being able to manage if we do see an uptick in distress? Krishna: We watch the trends like hawks and we look at everything from leading indicators to lagging indicators on how consumers are spending. Typically the mortgage is the last thing to go, so consumers will do anything and everything to make sure that they stay in their homes. I would say given everything we've seen too far, we're not worried in the sense that we see, you know, deep structural cracks in the way that the industry is developing. But at the same time, we know affordability is a challenge. Inventory is a challenge and we also know that there's still a significant amount of friction in the entire experience as well. We need to start thinking of it as a continuum, where a consumer will progress from renting to eventually ending up in a home which is still the bedrock of the American dream. And if we can help them with that from a lifetime perspective or we can help them not just search and find a home, but to be able to finance it, title it and then service it, we can take a lot of cost out of the system. Part of the problem today is that when you think about the expense, a lot of it goes into things like lead acquisition, right? Mortgage leads are one of the most expensive leads and mortgage companies spend thousands of dollars on individual leads. The margins end up being a little bit low because of that. And then there's no lifetime value because the consumer is in a different part of the funnel for servicing. We can make it faster. This is our approach to saying this is how we want to help fix the problem and to create a model that we think is more sustainable as far as homeownership is concerned. More: As real estate listings become more private, Zillow fights back This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rocket buys Redfin. Here's what its CEOs told USA Today Sign in to access your portfolio
