Redfin is being acquired in an all-stock transaction that values the real estate listing platform at $1.75 billion.
The acquiring company is Rocket Companies, a Detroit, Michigan-based finance and real estate holding firm that owns various brands, including Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Money (formerly Truebill), and Rocket Loans.
The combined entity will essentially pool the two companies’ respective strengths in home search services and financing.
“Rocket and Redfin’s approaches to lending and brokerage service have always been two halves of one vision to make the whole home-buying process magical,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a statement. “We want a customer to be able to check her phone to find out what she can afford, see which homes are just right for her, schedule a tour with a local, expert Redfin agent, and get pre-qualified for a loan, all in a matter of minutes.”
Founded in Seattle in 2004, Redfin runs a residential real estate brokerage platform for the U.S. and Canadian markets. The self-proclaimed “Amazon of real estate” went public in 2017, and its shares generally traded flat at around $20 in the subsequent few years. But as with many tech companies, Redfin soared during the pandemic, with its stock hitting an all-time high of $96 in early 2021, before plummeting to below $10 for much of the past three years.
Redfin’s shares had slipped more than 30% in the past couple of weeks after its Q4 2024 earnings missed analysts’ expectations and its current-quarter forecast was considered weak.
Rocket Companies, for its part, went public in 2020, and today has a market cap of $31 billion. The company’s proposed bid of $12.50 per share represents a 63% premium over Redfin’s volume weighted average price (VWAP) for the month leading up to March 7, 2025. The offer entails exchanging 0.7926 shares of Rocket Companies’ Class A stock for each share of Redfin common stock, with Rocket Companies’ shareholders owning 95% of the new combined entity and Redfin shareholders owning 5%.
While both boards of directors have already approved the transaction, it does still require Redfin’s shareholders to rubberstamp the deal, which Redfin says it expects to happen in Q3, 2025. Kelman, who has led Redfin since 2005, will continue at the helm and report to Rocket’s CEO, Varun Krishna.
This article was updated to clarify that Redfin will remain a public company as part of Rocket Companies.
