Biggest Stories In 2025: Rocket, Redfin Enters The Portal Wars

From lawsuits to mergers and acquisitions at a scale never seen before in real estate and everything in between, 2025 was full of twists, turns and surprises for the housing industry. HousingWire is rewinding and breaking down the biggest storylines in the real estate industry from this past year.

There is no doubt that 2025 will be remembered for some massive M&A deals. Those large deals started off in early March when Rocket announced it had acquired Redfin for $1.75 billion.

In a presentation to investors announcing the acquisition, Rocket outlined how its acquisition of Redfin would help the company create a more seamless and affordable way for consumers to transact real estate, showing how it will take consumers from the home search phase all the way through title and closing. 

For many in the housing industry, this strategy rang quite a few bells as it’s more or less identical to Zillow’s “Housing Super App Strategy.” And while the real estate portals have been jockeying for consumers and influence over transactions for years, this was the first time a player had entered with the market cap and scale capable of truly competing with Zillow. 

As analysts noted this spring the two companies have their own strengths including Zillow’s synonymity with home search and Rocket’s massive mortgage operation, and they felt that the space was big enough for both of these massive players. With Rocket closing its acquisition of Redfin in early July, it still remains to be seen how this battle of the titans could play out. 

But while Rocket-Redfin and Zillow are certainly the headliners, other players have also entered the game, most notably Lower, which acquired real estate portal Movoto from its parent company OJO Labs in mid-May. As a retail lender, Lower is approaching things a bit differently. In mid-July, Movoto CEO John Berkowitz told HousingWire that he and Lower were focused on building and strengthening relationships between agents and loan officers at a local level to help grow both sides of the business. 

While the victor of the portal wars is still unclear, there is no doubt that this storyline will be here for many years to come.