Rocket says it's grown its broker business over 400% since July 2017
March 8, 2021, 10:45 am By James Kleimann
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For the first time in its history, Rocket Mortgage has revealed the amount of business it does in the broker space.
The disclosure comes just days after United Wholesale Mortgage issued an ultimatum to mortgage brokers, telling them that they could not partner with Rocket or Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. and continue to do business with UWM.
The figures provided by Rocket — which are based on Inside Mortgage Finance securitization data — show that the Detroit-based lender closed roughly $97 billion in mortgages through its broker partners in 2020.
That’s good enough to make Rocket the second-largest wholesale lender in the country. It’s still far behind UWM — Mat Ishbia’s firm originated over $182 billion in mortgages in 2020, and is easily the largest player in wholesale — but Rocket Pro TPO is rapidly gaining market share, the released figures show.
(Rocket declined to provide details on gain-on-sale margins or net income for its broker operations, which are just one part of its partner channel; the other being a referral business with Charles Schwab, State Farm, Morgan Stanley and others.)
“We’ve had brokers call in left and right, clearly upset about this mandate from UWM,” Austin Niemiec, vice president of Rocket Pro TPO, told HousingWire in an interview Sunday night.
