Varun Krishna’s Friendship Tour

Varun Krishna wants the famously tribal mortgage industry to buy into his vision on how to serve the American homeowner. 

Joined by Jay Bray in Detroit, Krishna said that the different industries orbiting around homeownership (home search & real estate, financing, title & appraisal, then servicing) are "incredibly disparate" & there hasn’t been enough disruption.

“If we can integrate them the right way, we can do something no one has done before — we can create lifetime value to customer acquisition cost that has never existed in housing because servicing creates lifetime value,” Krishna, The Mortgage Scoop’s Person of the Year in ‘25, told Greg Sher on his “One-on-One” podcast released Monday.

To that point, he’s thinking well beyond the traditional channel boundaries in mortgage & real estate. A man in search of a platform, if you will.

“We wanted to create a real estate ecosystem; that's why we have a brokerage within Redfin, but we're also expanding that brokerage by partnering with Compass. And so these are just examples of where our mindset is very much around building an open platform… the key thing is it's all about mindset, and it's about shared values.”

Rocket’s exclusive partnership w/ Compass might be a sneak preview of sorts for mortgage. “This is about really building a muscle around being a demand generation platform,” he said. “And if you get this right, what it allows you to do is then extend that platform to more and more parties.”

Rocket has a dedicated team in place to explore potential partnerships. And while executives have their hands full integrating Redfin, Mr. Cooper & increasing market share via wholesale, Krishna didn’t dismiss the idea of even acquiring an IMB down the road. 

“The housing market is a $5T market, mortgage is about $1.5T & no one has more than single-digit market share,” he said.

Other quick highlights from Sher’s interview with Bray & Krishna:

The legal battle between Marty Preston & Benchmark Mortgage threatens to potentially create a public audit of the corporate culture & private operations at the $3.5B IMB, writes Paul Hindman. 

“With Preston seemingly willing to let the books tell the story, Benchmark may think they are fighting over trade secrets, but they are actually inviting a forensic spotlight onto decisions that could expose their private operations and much more of their private lives to the world.

Also, IMO: If they don’t settle, more details regarding the yacht and the text-message firing will likely see the light of day.

With that, will all of this become the only thing people talk about when they hear the company name? As I typically describe with these types of battles: The owners are now in a position where they may have to choose between their pride and their reputation.”

Without a resolution, Hindman said it’s heading for a “a total shit-show.”

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I reported last week that the Dark Matter Technology RIF affected 5% of staffers. Technically, that is true — but only when including staff in India, who support DMT products but are technically a separate company. Sources said the layoffs affected 17% of total U.S. staff & there were 385 employees stateside prior to the most recent RIF. 

As for why the layoffs happened, clearly an embrace of AI is a big part of it. But insiders also attributed it to market conditions/sales. For more details, check out my story from last week. 

It will be interesting to see what former CEO Rich Gagliano does next now that his non-compete is just about up. He was president of Black Knight for 12 years.

“I think he’d love another crack and putting people together he has trust in,” said one source who knows him. “He did an excellent job bringing in his people to make BK a success.”

NMN has a fun interview with the self-described “TCPA czar,” Eric Troutman. First, the guy has an even better hat game than me. Second, he is right that plaintiffs lawyers are beginning to target mortgage lenders. There are at least a half-dozen cases filed in the last six months.

He told Andrew Martinez that TCPA settlements regularly hit seven- or eight-figures & can be done in under a year. Certification rates are at 70% to 75%. 

“Real estate agencies have just been destroyed in the last three or four years,” Troutman said. “Now we are seeing the mortgage companies back in the spotlight. I think there's definitely going to be more pain in this particular sector as the plaintiffs lawyers again sharpen their knives and come back for the mortgage industry.”

Just wait until all these AI voice chatbots start hitting up people on the DNCR…

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