Rocket Companies reported $2.78 billion in second-quarter revenue, enough to drive a $229 million profit for those three months, up from $34 million a year earlier.
Rocket said broker partners have originated more than $2 billion in net rate lock volume through the Compass partnership since it launched, as Compass agents have referred more clients to work with Rocket, the company’s executives said Thursday.
Redfin now offers roughly 25,000 exclusive listings nationally that aren’t available on other major home search portals, Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna told investors Thursday, crediting the company’s partnership with Compass for the inventory, in addition to exclusive inventory from Redfin agents.
“In markets like Chicago, that advantage is already driving meaningful increases in both home buyer and mortgage leads,” Krishna said on Rocket’s earnings call.
The call was a chance for Krishna and other Rocket executives to state that the business was built differently from other search portals, mortgage originators and servicers.
“It was one of the toughest spring housing markets in years,” Krishna said. “But against that backdrop, Rocket reached record market share in both purchase and refinance, delivered its most profitable quarter in four years and continued executing ahead of plan.”
Rocket said that it gained market share in the quarter despite the ongoing soft real estate market, in part because it is now part of the entire real estate cycle from search through loan servicing.
“We originate, we service, we recapture. Our technology makes the entire platform work as one,” Krishna said. “We actually think that separation will accelerate as the market improves.”
But that came with a downside: Rocket said that it believes the market will begin to sour right away.
When it last publicly shared its earnings results in May, Rocket officials said that they had a more negative view of the spring and summer real estate market than other forecasters, many of whom were already predicting another year of low home sales amid high rates, concerns about inflation and high home prices.
On Thursday, Rocket CFO Brian Brown said the company again has a more negative near-term outlook of the market.
“The expected housing recovery in 2026 has not materialized as increasing rates continue to pressure affordability,” Brown said. “Last quarter, we told you our real-time data indicated a tougher market than industry forecasts suggested. The same data leads us to expect the third quarter mortgage market to be smaller than the second, something the industry has not seen since 2022.”
While the outlook is negative for the industry at large, the Rocket executives said that recent acquisitions, investments in technology including artificial intelligence and its partnership with Compass had insulated the company during the ongoing down market.
“If you only originate, then you have an Achilles’ heel, which is that you get exposed when rates rise and when volume falls. If you only service, but you don’t have recapture, then you don’t get to participate fully in that next transaction, and you have likely a retention problem,” Krishna said. “If you only have traffic, but you cannot convert it into a mortgage, then you will only own a small fraction of the economics.”
“We respect our competitors, but honestly, we don’t spend a lot of time really thinking about them,” Krishna said.
The executives said it costs less money for Rocket to gain market share because it owns the entire life cycle of the real estate search, purchase and payment system.
When rates fall, Krishna said, the company historically has gained more market share.
But while they’re elevated, Krishna believes that the wave of consolidation in the industry will continue.
“And we expect to be a beneficiary of that,” Krishna said.
