Rocket Mortgage Acquiring Redfin!

Anthony Lamacchia:Rocket companies, Rocket Mortgage, acquires Redfin. This is very big news in the real estate space today on Monday, March 10th, and I have to say I very much applaud my friends at the rocket companies. We do a good amount of business with rocket homes and there’s a lot of good people there. They send us a lot of business and they have very much improved their mortgage services and mortgage operations, and because we’re doing more business with them when we receive, especially when we receive referrals from them, and this is a major power play for them, major power play, I have to applaud them, I know that there’s a lot of speculation out there, speculation as far as you know, what are they up to, what are they doing, I’ve gotten texts from many, many friends who have said. They’re definitely going to become a discount brokerage, they’re gonna follow, you know, Redfin’s old model, and they go in there with their ancillary services and things like that. I don’t see it. I don’t think they’re going to do that. I’m willing to bet that they want to take all of the buyer business that comes in through their very strong website. I mean, let’s face it, folks, OK, let’s let’s little secret. Redfin’s website kicks ass. OK, it’s a very good website. I can’t go two weeks without a friend of mine texting me a Redfin link of a property that they’re interested in. And the truth is Zillow Realtor.com and Redfin are the dominating forces in the online space, online search space, and you know, now Rocket went from Essentially creating leads off of their mortgage leads and some other online channels that they have to now having one of the biggest buyer lead. Websites in existence, massive power play, I will say I’m surprised that they weren’t able to get a larger sale price. I mean, this shows how Redfin’s model. You know, their employee model, their years of discounting, then trying to make it work with employees, it just doesn’t fly, it just doesn’t work, and that’s why they weren’t able to drive as much of a multiple as they probably had hoped. I mean, 1.75 billion is no small amount of money, but. Being a national real estate brokerage with one of the top probably 3 or 4 real estate websites out there to only sell for that much, you know, surprises me. But hey, I’m sure they did what they had to do, and congrats to Glenn for selling the company for, you know, probably fulfilled his dreams. They were public and now they’re going to go back to being private and held by Rocket. Under the rocket umbrella and, and I’m impressed. I gotta, I gotta commend Rocket for it, so I suspect this is a play for Rocket to drive in way more buyer leads to probably at some point put it through their homes network or some system like that. I mean, they have quite a network of brokerages like ours that receive leads from them, and they just became a huge player in the online space, so kudos to them, I don’t fear them trying to do. Discounting and all that, I don’t know. I just don’t see it happening and who really cares if they do, whatever. There’s plenty of discount brokerages out there. There’s plenty of brokerages that charge more or less, etc. whatever. That’s capitalism. That’s the way it goes. But anyway, that’s my thoughts, my friends, have a good one.

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