Brian Brown, chief financial officer and treasurer for Rocket Companies, expects continued improvement in the mortgage market in 2026, building on momentum that emerged in the second half of 2025.
“If you look at the mortgage forecasts, it depends on which one you choose, but they’re up anywhere from 8% to 25% based on the Fannie Mae and MBA numbers,” Brown said during a webinar with Fitch Ratings. “That would be very good for this industry.”
Brown said 2025 ultimately resembled 2024, although conditions improved in the latter half of the year as inventory increased and mortgage rates eased, but not “as much as some of us would like.”
“In 2024, mortgage rates averaged around 7%, and when we look at [the end of] 2025, they were about 6.15%,” Brown said. “A 25- and 50-basis-point change makes a big difference in terms of affordability to the average consumer, if you’re in the buying process — and it also makes a big deal in terms of whether you’re eligible for a rate-and-term refinance.”
Mortgage cycles do not shift overnight, Brown added, but incremental changes matter. He expects rates could dip into the 5% range by the end of this year.
‘All-weather business’
While Rocket will “take some help from the market,” Brown said the company is very “bullish” on its positioning for 2026 following its acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper in 2025.
“Redfin has 50 million monthly active users,” Brown said. “Not all of them will buy a home this year, but based on our estimation, about 20% to 25% of all the people that will buy a home in a given year will have visited that Redfin site.”
The company is building what Brown describes as an “all-weather business” — one that benefits from servicing cash flows if rates stay higher for longer, and from recapture opportunities if rates fall. On the servicing side, Rocket and Mr. Cooper together now service roughly one in every six mortgages in the U.S., he added.
A key tailwind is consumers’ heightened sensitivity to mortgage rates following the pandemic-era refinancing boom.
“The number of inbound calls we get on a Fed meeting day — or when there’s news about (Jerome) Powell or rate cuts — is really substantial,” Brown said. “Consumers are much more tuned into their mortgage rate and understand that it doesn’t take much, in terms of basis points, to make a transaction work.”
According to Brown, about 25% of Rocket’s servicing portfolio carries rates above 6%, representing roughly $320 billion in unpaid principal balance. Brown said Rocket’s ability to close loans in 10 to 14 days allows borrowers to realize savings sooner than they might through traditional financial institutions.
“We didn’t design the servicing experience to make money from ancillary fees, because we know the bad downstream effect,” Brown said. “The servicing asset is very valuable. We care deeply about it, but the opportunity to capture that next mortgage is four or five times the value of that servicing asset.
“And, by the way, when we do really good recapture, we replace that servicing asset with a brand new one at prevailing rates that, in some cases, is actually worth more.”
Liquidity is king
Asked how Rocket manages downside risk, Brown emphasized liquidity — particularly the need to fund servicing advances. As of the third quarter of 2025, Rocket reported $9.3 billion in liquidity, including $6.2 billion in cash and $3.1 billion in available credit lines.
“The thing about advances is, they’re temporary,” Brown said. “It could be maybe three to six to maybe nine months of cash outstanding, but that can peak at any given time. You have to measure your liquidity against the peak advances number, and that’s really how we think about it, but we feel pretty good about where we stand there.”
Brown added that Rocket has invested in technology to automate loss-mitigation workflows, allowing borrowers to select workout options more efficiently.
Looking ahead, he expects continued consolidation in a fragmented mortgage industry increasingly shaped by technology, artificial intelligence and scale advantages.
“It surprises me that it took this long for consolidation to really begin,” Brown said.
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