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- A real estate juggernaut is forming: Rocket agrees to acquire Mr. Cooper just weeks after the Redfin deal
A real estate juggernaut is forming: Rocket agrees to acquire Mr. Cooper just weeks after the Redfin deal
On Monday, giant mortgage lender Rocket Companies announced that it has agreed to buy mortgage servicer giant Mr. Cooper for $9.4 billion.
Lance Lambert
March 31, 2025
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Speaking to ResiClub in December, Mr. Cooper CEO Jay Bray told me that real estate would see a lot of mergers and acquisitions in 2025—and that Mr. Cooper was out shopping—as the industry continues to “grind” through the prolonged housing activity slump that started back in summer 2022.
“You've seen consolidation already. If you think about this industry going forward, you're going to need a balanced business model. You're going to need the capability to invest in technology, to use everybody's favorite two initials: AI. What does that require? That requires scale, that requires capital, that requires a healthy balance sheet, and so I think as long as we're in this kind of grind it out origination market, I don't see any reason you will not see more consolidation happen. The stronger players will continue to get stronger, to some degree, and continue to look for opportunities to consolidate,” Bray told ResiClub in December.
Bray added that: “we are in the stronger category… if you go back over the last decade or even beyond, we've been consistently acquiring servicing. It could come in the form of buying a portfolio from a bank, or it could be where we're actually acquiring a company that does have some origination capability as well as a servicing portfolio. We've probably done more acquisitions than anybody in the industry, by far, and so, yeah, we're still in the market for that… We will be looking for opportunity, [we’ll] be looking for opportunities at the origination side, if we felt like there was a platform out there that made sense to ours… that was not a significant lift from an integration standpoint, and we would certainly consider and we will be active and looking for opportunities.”
Bray was right that a big deal loomed—only the hunter became the hunted.
On Monday, mortgage lending giant Rocket Companies (owner of Rocket Mortgage, formerly known as Quicken Loans) announced it has reached an agreement to acquire mortgage servicer giant Mr. Cooper for $9.4 billion.
Rocket Companies claims that, combined, they will service more than $2.1 trillion in loan volume, including 1 in 6 mortgages in America.
"Servicing is a critical pillar of homeownership alongside home search and mortgage origination," wrote Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies, in the press release. "With the right data and AI infrastructure we will deliver the right products at the right time. That's how we build lifelong relationships, by proactively unlocking benefits and meeting needs before they arise. We look forward to welcoming Mr. Cooper's nearly 7 million clients."
This deal also comes just three weeks after Rocket Companies announced on March 10th that it struck an agreement to buy Redfin in a $1.75 billion deal.
Below is some industry commentary provided to ResiClub today.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that Zillow’s true competition isn’t CoStar—it’s Rocket. Everyone’s been watching CoStar’s $1 billion ad blitz with Homes.com, but their residential play is burning cash with no meaningful traction. Meanwhile, Rocket is executing something far more ambitious—and more dangerous: they’re buying the full residential real estate stack.
Let’s break it down:
Redfin = front-of-house customer acquisition.
Rocket = origination and lending, already the dominant direct-to-consumer player.
Mr. Cooper = $2.1 trillion servicing portfolio and 4.6 million customers.
This is vertical integration on an entirely new scale. And critically, Rocket had to borrow from JPMorgan to finance the Mr. Cooper acquisition—a signal that even with strong earnings, they’re willing to lever up to win this land grab.
Two forces are at play right now:
1. The real estate transaction itself is undergoing tectonic change. The NAR settlement is just the start. We're watching the unbundling of a 112-year-old commission structure. A wave of agentless transactions is coming—and Rocket is positioning to serve them end-to-end. Zillow’s current model relies heavily on agent commissions ($1.2 billion of its $1.9 billion in revenue). They’ve started to pivot into mortgage origination and full-stack products, but the scale Rocket already commands in direct-to-consumer lending puts them in a league of their own.
2. The current administration is pro-business—and it’s a tailwind for M&A [mergers and acquisitions]. Rocket is taking advantage of this moment with bold moves, consolidating distribution, infrastructure, and recurring revenue. Both Zillow and Rocket are chasing verticalization, but Rocket is further along—and playing to win. They now control the entire journey: from lead to loan to lifetime servicing. Zillow still has front-of-funnel traffic, for now—but Rocket has monetization. The big loser in all this? CoStar. Their residential push isn’t sticky, isn’t scaled, and at $1 billion [per] year in ad spend is starting to look like a costly distraction.”
“It’s all about recapture, which has become one of the hottest trends in the mortgage space since interest rates spiked and loan origination volume tanked. Rocket will leverage its industry-leading ability to resell existing customers instead of having to go out and find new ones.”
Big picture: Rocket Companies is strategically positioning itself as a giant force in residential real estate, aiming to create a one-stop shop for homebuyers by merging Redfin’s customer funnel and Mr. Cooper’s mortgage servicing with its existing mortgage lending business.
The table below shows net DOMESTIC migration shifts in America’s 50 largest metro area housing markets.
Keep in mind that this metric (net domestic migration) is NOT total population change. It doesn’t include births/deaths nor international migration.
Net domestic migration is calculated as the difference between the number of Americans moving into a given market (in-migration) and the number of people leaving that market (out-migration) over a specific period.
These shifts are July to July (for example, 2024 = shift between July 2023 and July 2024.
ResiClub PRO members (paid tier) can access our full net domestic migration report, which includes 16 charts and maps, as well as analysis for over 800+ metros and 3,000+ counties.
The table below shows net INTERNATIONAL migration shifts in America’s 50 largest metro area housing markets.
These shifts are July to July (for example, 2024 = shift between July 2023 and July 2024.
ResiClub PRO members can access our full net international migration report, which includes 17 charts and maps, as well as analysis for over 800+ metros and 3,000+ counties.
There was a typo in the research article that went out earlier today to ResiClub PRO members.
It should have said “Q4 2024,” not “Q4 2020.”
