Photo courtesy of Redfin

While the news that Rocket Companies had acquired Redfin sent shockwaves through the residential real estate industry, a local expert noted that the impact won’t be as great locally.

The Detroit-based mortgage company announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase brokerage and listings portal Redfin in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.75 billion. Rocket’s digital platform has grown to provide home financing in all 50 states across more than 3,000 counties.

“Rocket and Redfin have a unified vision of a better way to buy and sell homes,” Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna said in a statement. “Together, we will improve the experience by connecting traditionally disparate steps of the search and financing process with leading technology that removes friction, reduces costs and increases value to American homebuyers.”

While the deal sees two real estate giants come together, Ryan Castle, CEO of the of Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors and its associated MLS said he thinks the deal’s local impact won’t be as great as Krishna and Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman have suggested.

“Locally, this does not have much impact as the market shareholders have their own dominance,” he said. “However, this is a public example of what has been happening at the regional level through consolidation that we’ve seen happen at warp speed since around 2018.”

Still, Castle said, this deal shows how companies want to be a one-stop shop for buying, selling and financing homes.

“Nationally, this is a natural evolution of a longstanding strategy in residential real estate: mortgage and brokerage services under one roof,” he said. “Moving forward, I think it will be interesting to see how they leverage what many feel is best-in-class tech stacks to further create efficiency in the real estate transaction.”