Wholesale giant Rocket Pro TPO has raised its conforming loan limits, claiming to be the first mortgage player to do so for the third year in a row.
The lender as of Friday is offering a conforming threshold for single-unit loans of $802,650, from $766,550, it said. As home prices continue to climb, Rocket is stretching its limit for a 4-unit conforming loan to $1,543,900 in the lower 48 states, and up to $2,315,850 for such properties in Alaska and Hawaii.
“Our ultimate goal is to show broker partners that don’t do business with us some of the benefits and some of the things that we can do because of our size and our liquidity,” said Mike Fawaz, executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency regularly announces its conforming loan limit in late November. Lending competitors often get ahead of that with new conforming limits weeks and months prior. After United Wholesale Mortgage and Pennymac jumped the gun in 2021, Rocket Pro TPO in 2022 announced new conforming limits immediately after Labor Day.
Rocket can hold the loans until the new year because of the company’s “fortress-like” balance sheet, it said. The publicly traded firm has a warchest well into the billions of dollars and so far this year has recorded nine-figure quarterly profits.
The move comes on the heels of their announcement of a lender-funded buydown product and an investor day Tuesday where Rocket leadership described growth goals. Rocket Companies and Rocket Mortgage CEO Varun Krishna said the lender in the next three years wants to double its purchase market share from 4% to 8%, and expand its refinance market share from 12% to 20%, according to reporting by S&P Global.
In the second quarter, Rocket Pro TPO produced $11.5 billion in loan volume, alongside the firm’s direct-to-consumer arm originating $13.1 billion in mortgage volume. The company is only eclipsed in wholesale by UWM’s production in recent years.
Fawaz said Rocket has seen an increase in refinance activity, although volume hasn’t hit a “boom” yet. The TPO leader also touted Rocket’s home equity origination activity, after the company said that product hit a record-high in the spring.
Rocket’s third-party origination business also last week named former Sagent CEO Dan Sogorka as general manager. The mortgage technology veteran told National Mortgage News he wants to leverage Rocket’s tech to help brokers speed up the homebuying process.
