Rocket Pro TPO gives brokers an edge with new pricing offer

Rocket Pro TPO wants to incentivize its broker partners to bring in more purchase and refinance business in the month of November via a new offering.

For the next two weeks, brokers working with Rocket will automatically get a 24 basis point credit on every eligible purchase or refinance for conventional and government loans, Rocket Pro TPO announced Monday.

The pricing incentive, dubbed 24 takeoff, is not valid on jumbo, home equity or bank statement loans. It also cannot be retroactively applied to previously closed or locked loans, a Rocket press person added.

"November will be your month to unlock untapped business potential," said Mike Fawaz, executive vice president of wholesale at Rocket, said in a Youtube video announcing the incentive. Brokers can qualify for the pricing offer from Nov. 5 to Nov. 17.

The announcement comes as interest rates begin to rise again, approaching the 7% range and adding pressure on origination activity.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.72% as of Oct. 31, up 18 basis points from last week's 6.54%, the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey reported.

The conditions could negatively impact shops that are refinance heavy, such as Rocket, a research note from Keefe, Bruyette and Woods predicts.

"We continue to believe this backdrop is particularly negative for refi volume-sensitive names within our coverage [primarily Rocket]," wrote analysts, using the lender's stock symbol. "We prefer names which typically benefit more on a relative basis from higher purchase volumes."

KBW pointed to Pennymac Financial Services and United Wholesale Mortgage as purchase market beneficiaries.

Nonetheless, executives at Rocket have hefty origination aspirations in the years to come. During its investor day in September, Rocket announced plans to get 8% of all purchase loans and 20% of refinancings by 2027; the latter is up from its current share of 12.5%.

Brian Brown, chief financial officer, says he sees the TPO channel as one of the opportunities to grow market share on the purchase side.

"We really believe we have a superpower here to help the brokers that work with Rocket, and the reason we believe that is because what we're doing is we're taking the technology and we're taking the 40 years of experience, team members and process that we had in the direct-to-consumer space, and we're starting to extend that to the broker community," Brown said. "So we're sort of supercharging them with the tools and learnings and processes we have over the years in the direct-to-consumer space."