The year 2025 has been all about mortgage and real estate linkups and vertical integration.
Two of the biggest were announced in the month of March, when Rocket acquired Redfin and a few weeks later, Mr. Cooper too.
Those moves could propel Rocket back to #1 on the top mortgage lender ranking list, a position it ceded to United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM).
And it appears smaller lenders are taking note of this strategy, with Lower Mortgage announcing today it would acquire Movoto, a top-5 real estate portal in the U.S.
Like the others, it’s looking to create an end-to-end homeownership platform while taking advantage of valuable top-of-funnel web traffic.
Lower’s Acquisition of Movoto Will Make It the Portal’s Preferred Lender
Similar to how Rocket will likely inject ads into the Redfin platform once the merger is complete, Lower is looking to be the preferred lender for Movoto.
The real estate portal apparently received 150 million visits during 2024, making it the 5th largest real estate portal in the United States.
Zillow is the leader in the space thanks to its popular Zestimate home valuation tool, followed by Redfin, Realtor, and then Trulia.
Homes.com is reportedly fifth, followed by Remax, but it depends how it’s measured and what’s considered a portal I suppose.
Movoto is 7th on that list, but that’s for all real estate websites, so it’s still a relative heavyweight any way you slice it.
And once Lower closes on the acquisition, the plan will be to grow the brand even more while incorporating its team of loan officers with visitors of the site.
Their goal is also to be the lender of choice for real estate agents on the platform, via a so-called “super-team.”
In the process, they’ll likely replace current third-party lender ads with their own, thereby eliminating one of the biggest pain points to growth, which in their own words is customer acquisition.
The Real Estate Portals Are Now Tied Up with Mortgage Lenders
Lower, which calls itself one of the fastest-growing mortgage lenders in the country, is following in the footsteps of the bigger players like Rocket Mortgage and its pending Redfin acquisition.
They want access to an endless stream of prospective home buyers, and snagging a real estate portal rich with content seems to be the move these days.
It’s not enough to simply partner with a real estate company, though Lower is also the exclusive mortgage provider for Opendoor.
The lender is well aware that Movoto has the ability to deliver “a steady stream of high-intent buyers looking to get pre-approved.”
And that’s the perfect formula to scale in a low-volume environment, while also enjoying synergies like access to tons of content to incorporate their home loan services.
The other top real estate portal, Zillow, operates Zillow Home Loans, so that’s the lender of choice over there, despite them still operating a third-party lender search tool called the Mortgage Marketplace.
They also own Trulia. That leaves Realtor and Homes as the only major portals without an associated mortgage lender (keep an eye on that!).
It’s unclear what Lower is paying to acquire Movoto, but the company will be integrated into the Lower brand immediately after closing.
The combined companies will consist of 1,000+ employees across two locations in Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas.
Chances are that could push Lower up the mortgage lender rankings in short order. They funded more than $5 billion in 2024, per HMDA data, and could well land in the top-25 once the merger begins to bears fruit.
