Analysis: These Lenders Own the Strongest Realtor Relationships

Zillow’s entire business is built around connecting consumers w/ real estate agents. Its own LOs, however, have some of the weakest agent relationships in mortgage.

In today’s edition of The Mortgage Scoop, I dig into RETR’s new Agent Loyalty Index to rank the industry’s 35-biggest lenders by Realtor stickiness (plus some mid-sized players). NFM sits at the top; Zillow & Veterans United are in the basement.

Paid subscribers of The Mortgage Scoop get all the details & analysis.

Plus: economists say the Fed’s next move is still a rate cut, just maybe not until Q3 ‘27 🤷; PrimeLending loses another $2M; Denmark 🇩🇰 fights over one of the world’s cheapest mortgage systems & more.

Economists continue to expect the Federal Reserve’s next move will be a 25 bps rate cut even as financial markets price in higher borrowing costs by the end of ‘26. 

Forecasters in an 80-economist Bloomberg survey see the cut happening in Q3 ‘27, which contrasts w/ views from policymakers & investors who have suggested rate hikes may be coming. “The US economy is shifting from a higher-for-longer interest-rate story to a higher-for-longer uncertainty story — & that may prove the more consequential headwind for the Fed & markets alike,” Dennis Shen, a lecturer in finance at the International School of Management in Berlin, told Bloomberg.

Retail shop PrimeLending notched $2.39B in origination volume in Q2, up 17% from Q1, but still managed to lose $2M. That was actually an improvement on Q1, in which PrimeLending lost $2.4M. 

“The mortgage market faced a subdued start to the summer buying season primarily due to the recent increase in mortgage rates,” said Jeremy Ford, whose firm Hilltop Holdings owns PrimeLending.

A few months ago, I reported that, per LOs, rate sheets were looking rough in the spring & LOs would be charged on EPOs…

One of the country’s top bankers has set off a national debate by calling for more regulation of its unique mortgage industry & its "covered bond" system, which delivers some of the cheapest mortgages on earth. 

Per Bloomberg, Michael Rasmussen, CEO of Nykredit, wants tighter rules on so-called priority loans, which are offered by rival lenders like Danske Bank & Nordea. These loans let banks tailor mortgage pricing for individual borrowers. Rasmussen says they threaten covered bonds by luring away potential customers. After some non-hygge brouhaha, the government is now reviewing whether priority loans need tighter oversight. 

“The outcome of those discussions could shape the next iteration of a mortgage model that has long been viewed as one of the region’s financial success stories,” Bloomberg wrote.

Of the 35 nonbank lenders in America w/ 500+ LOs, the one w/ the second-least loyal agent relationships is… Zillow Home Loans. The company that literally sells real estate agents to consumers can't get its own call center LOs sticky Realtor partnerships lol. That's one takeaway from RETR's new Agent Loyalty Index, which I used to determine stickiness among large IMBs & broker shops. (Disclosure: RETR is an advertising partner.)

Quick methodology, in plain English: RETR’s new tool takes every LO doing 10+ loans a year, finds that LO's top agent partner, scores how loyal that agent is on a 0–10 scale, & averages it across the company. They call it a Realtor stickiness score. One caveat I'll flag 🎏 —> it measures each producer's single best relationship, not overall referral dependence. But still directionally v useful.

RETR's own analysis framed it as brokers (5.81 avg) vs. IMBs (5.43) vs. banks (4.55). Def check that out. Personally, I was most interested in filtering to IMBs & broker shops operating at real scale. The hefty boyz. My analysis looks at firms w/ 500+ LOs & 200+ of them actually producing. 

Let’s get started! Tier one: distributed retail & the broker aggregators, clustered between 5.8 & 6.3. NFM Lending tops the entire cohort at 6.26 — which makes sense given their whole bet is on LO personal brands. NFM edged out Guild (6.25), CMG (6.19), Fairway (6.08), w/ C2, Thuan Nguyen’s Loan Factory, NEXA, Edge & Barrett all right there. A wholesale aggregator & a purchase-heavy retail IMB produce nearly identical loyalty scores in the top tier.

Check out this chart detailing the top 35 👇