Rocket Companies to acquire Redfin for $1.75B
Redfin is being acquired in an all-stock transaction that values the true property itemizing platform at $1.75 billion.
The buying firm is Rocket Companies, a Detroit, Michigan-based finance and actual property holding agency that owns numerous manufacturers together with Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Cash (formerly Truebill), and Rocket Loans.
The mixed entity will basically pool the 2 firms’ respective strengths in residence search providers and financing.
“Rocket and Redfin’s approaches to lending and brokerage service have at all times been two halves of 1 imaginative and prescient to make the entire home-buying course of magical,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman mentioned in a statement. “We wish a buyer to have the ability to examine her telephone to seek out out what she will afford, see which properties are excellent for her, schedule a tour with a neighborhood, knowledgeable Redfin agent, and get pre-qualified for a mortgage, all in a matter of minutes.”
Based in Seattle in 2004, Redfin runs a residential actual property brokerage platform for the U.S. and Canadian markets. The self-proclaimed “Amazon of actual property” went public in 2017, and its shares usually traded flat at round $20 within the subsequent few years. However as with many tech firms, Redfin soared through the pandemic, with its inventory hitting an all-time excessive of $96 in early 2021, earlier than plummeting to beneath $10 for a lot of the previous three years.
Redfin’s shares had slipped greater than 30% up to now couple of weeks after its Q4 2024 earnings missed analysts’ expectations and its current-quarter forecase was thought of weak.
Rocket Firms, for its half, went public in 2020, and immediately has a market cap of $31 billion. The corporate’s proposed bid of $12.50 per share represents a 63% premium over Redfin’s quantity weighted common worth (VWAP) for the month main as much as March 7, 2025. The supply entails exchanging 0.7926 shares of Rocket Firms’ Class A inventory for every share of Redfin widespread inventory, with Rocket Firms shareholders proudly owning 95% of the brand new mixed entity and Redfin shareholders proudly owning 5%.
Whereas each boards of administrators have already authorized the transaction, it does nonetheless require Redfin’s shareholders to rubberstamp the deal, which Redfin says it expects to occur in Q3, 2025. Kelman, who has led Redfin since 2005, will proceed on the helm and report back to Rocket’s CEO, Varun Krishna.
This text was up to date to make clear that Redfin will stay a public firm as a part of Rocket Firms.
