It’s been just over a year since Quicken Loans went digital with Rocket Mortgage, the lender’s fully online mortgage.
The rollout of Rocket Mortgage kicked in high gear when Quicken Loans introduced the world to its digital mortgage with a Super Bowl commercial that, well, confused quite a few people.
Once that original furor and confusion dissipated, ads for Rocket Mortgage became commonplace on TV, as Quicken worked hard to publicize its digital mortgage and entice borrowers to use it.
And now that the dust is settled from Rocket Mortgage’s first year of existence, the question is just how much did the digital mortgage drive business for Quicken Loans?
The answer depends on your perspective.
According to data published Tuesday by Quicken Loans, the lender funded $7 billion in closed loans through Rocket Mortgage in 2016.
That’s just over 7% of Quicken Loans’ total closed loan volume in 2016, which checked in at a record-breaking $96 billion, the lender said in the report.
However, if Rocket Mortgage was a lender unto itself, its $7 billion in closed loan volume alone would place it among the top 30 mortgage lenders in the country, according to Quicken.
So while Rocket Mortgage made up less than 8% of Quicken’s business in its first year, the digital mortgage is already one of the most successful lenders in the nation by itself.
“Rocket Mortgage has forever changed the way people think about getting a mortgage,” said Jay Farner, CEO of Quicken Loans.
“The product has been a success in so many ways, including its strong appeal to first-time homebuyers and ability to remove the intimidating and cumbersome aspects of the traditional mortgage process,” Farner said. “Rocket Mortgage has become a significant part of our business and will continue to be a central driver of our growth.”
According to Quicken, the growth of Rocket Mortgage comes from its appeal to a “new generation” of homebuyers.
Per Quicken’s data, 80% of Rocket Mortgage users were first-time homebuyers, while two-thirds of Rocket Mortgage customers used the platform for a home purchase mortgage, rather than a refinance.
Additionally, Quicken’s data showed that 18% of the first-time homebuyers that used Rocket Mortgage users were living rent free, with the remaining 82% paying rent.
And while one might think that most of Rocket Mortgages users are Millennials, Quicken’s data shows that’s not entirely the case, at least among those first-time buyers.
According to Quicken, of the first-time buyers that used Rocket Mortgage, 43% were 35 years of age or younger, while 57% were over the age of 35.
Quicken also notes that Rocket Mortgage cuts 12 days off of the loan closing process, when compared to the industry average.
