Real Estate Tech Meets Mortgage Services: What Founders Need to Know

Consolidating the homebuying process into a single end-to-end platform has long been the holy grail of real estate tech. Though this vision has yet to fully materialize, there’s been a noticeable and significant shift in that direction: the convergence of real estate tech and mortgage services.

As a real estate tech founder, you may be able to capitalize on this trend by expanding into financing or positioning your product as an attractive M&A target to mortgage lenders or alternative finance players. Either way, the resulting synergies may open the door to capturing a larger share of the real estate transaction value—while reducing risk and enhancing the homebuying experience for consumers.

The emerging consolidation

On March 10, 2025, Rocket Companies (parent company of Rocket Mortgage) announced its planned acquisition of Redfin, one of the top U.S. home search and brokerage platforms.

"Rocket and Redfin have a unified vision of a better way to buy and sell homes," said Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies. “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.”

Similarly, on May 13, 2025, digital mortgage lender Lower announced its acquisition of Movoto, another real estate search and brokerage platform.

"The future of our industry lies in blending the best technology with the irreplaceable expertise of local agents and loan officers," said Dan Snyder, CEO and Co-Founder of Lower. “Movoto is the perfect platform to accelerate this vision, allowing us to create a simpler, smarter path to homeownership.”

What’s driving the convergence

Bringing home search, agent services, and mortgage financing under one roof streamlines a traditionally complex and cumbersome homebuying process. Instead of getting preapproved for a loan, shopping for homes, working with an agent, going under contract, and then hoping the financing goes through, buyers can complete the entire journey with a single brand or platform.

When a unified team/platform manages the transaction from start to finish, it reduces back-and-forth for the buyer and minimizes the risk of missed steps, completing tasks out of order, or the deal falling through altogether. These consumer benefits—and the potential to capture significant market share—are driving the convergence of real estate tech and mortgage lending.

Challenges of merging

That said, merging real estate tech with mortgage lending isn’t without challenges.

For example, the incentives of real estate agents and mortgage lenders are not always aligned. While both aim to close deals, agents prioritize client satisfaction to earn repeat and referral business—and they have a fiduciary duty to act in the buyer’s best interest. In contrast, lenders underwrite loans that meet their risk criteria, which may not always align with what’s best for the buyer. This is why the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) restricts agents from receiving referral fees (aka kickbacks) from lenders. As a real estate tech platform that also offers mortgage services, navigating these potential conflicts of interest can be tricky.

Another potential challenge lies in merging wildly different tech stacks. On the one hand, consumer-facing real estate brands like Zillow and Redfin tend to have modern, forward-leaning technology because their business models rely heavily on delivering a high-quality user experience. On the other hand, mortgage lenders often use more dated software, as fewer customer touchpoints create less pressure to innovate. Integrating the two is no small feat.

How to help position real estate tech for M&A opportunities

As a real estate tech founder, now may be a good time to lean into mortgage products. For example, a tool to qualify mortgage leads or connect agents with loan officers could be attractive assets to a larger mortgage company looking to invest—especially if you’ve already built strong relationships with real estate professionals and can transfer that trust onto a larger brand.

In addition, you could explore ways to leverage AI. Much of the homebuying process is tailor-made for this technology because of how much data is involved. For example, quantifying risk during loan underwriting, estimating property values with market comps, and extracting information from borrowers’ financial documents are all data-heavy tasks that AI can do faster than humans.

In fact, this is part of the vision behind Redfin merging with Rocket Mortgage: "Varun and I see how much better real estate could be when AI guides customers not just through that first step in their search, but all the way home, through the sale, the loan and then a lifetime of accumulating equity and wealth," said Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin in the announcement.

Ultimately, there may be a major market opportunity for real estate tech in the mortgage space. The U.S. mortgage industry is massive, with the Mortgage Bankers Association projecting $2.3 trillion in mortgage originations in 2025 alone. Real estate tech founders who find ways to connect their product to mortgage lending may be better positioned to attract M&A deals.

This material and the opinions voiced are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or entity. All opinions and views constitute our judgments as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. The material may contain "forward-looking" information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections, forecasts, estimates of market returns and proposed or expected portfolio composition. Past performance is no guarantee of future results and there is no assurance this trend will continue.

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