Rocket Companies (RKT) CEO Varun Krishna has gone on a spring spending spree.
Rocket made its second significant acquisition of the month on Monday as it looks to gain share in the fragmented mortgage servicing industry.
The company will acquire mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper (COOP) for $9.4 billion in stock. The combined company will service more than $2.1 trillion in loan volume. Mr. Cooper boasts 7 million clients.
“Our vision is that we want to build an integrated homeownership platform,” Krishna said on Yahoo Finance’s Wealth (see video above). “We want to make the entire experience of homeownership, from home search to origination to servicing, seamless and frictionless for our clients.”
Rocket expects the deal to generate annual run rate revenue and cost synergies of about $500 million. The deal is expected to be accretive to Rocket’s business upon closing later this year.
Rocket stock fell 9.5% in afternoon trading.
Earlier this month Rocket said it would purchase popular real estate brokerage and home data website Redfin (RDFN) for $1.75 billion. The deal is seen boosting Rocket’s mortgage origination business.
Combined, Krishna has invested more than $11 billion this month. Rocket’s stock price has fallen on both deals.
As of 3:00:13 PM EDT. Market Open.
That hasn’t shaken Krishna.
“We feel great about the story with our investors and our shareholders. We are building a generational company,” Krishna said.
Rocket’s deal flurry comes at a crucial time for the US housing market as buyers continue to deal with elevated mortgage rates. But mortgage rates are off their highs — opening a window for improved demand trends during the peak spring buying season.
Sales of new homes in February increased 1.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 676,000. Sales rose 5.1% year over year. And January’s sales were revised higher.
Read more: What is the best time of year to buy a house?
The wildcard on the housing market passing an inflection point this spring are tariffs from the Trump administration. Not only could they raise the cost of building a home, but they may prompt a rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
“When you think about things like tariffs and inflation, it’s still a little early. I think there are a lot of folks that are speculating,” Krishna said. “We see some really positive green shoots. We see inventory up. We see more homes selling at or below list [price]. We don’t see as many of those competitive bidding dynamics that have existed in the past. We know that the mortgage origination market this year is going to be about $1.9 trillion, and that’s up 10% to 15% from where it was last year. So what we see is actually positive.”
