Inside the Lower and Movoto deal with Dan Snyder and John Berkowitz

HousingWire

Last month, HousingWire covered the breaking news of mortgage lender Lower acquiring real estate portal Movoto from parent company OJO Labs. Last week, Diego got the opportunity to chat with Dan Snyder, the Founder and CEO of Lower, and John Berkowitz, the CEO of Movoto and now the President of Real Estate at Lower, live and in person at HousingWire’s The Gathering 2025. Today, we are bringing that conversation exclusively to our Power House audience!   Diego, Dan, and John give a behind-the-scenes look into the acquisition and how Lower is building an end-to-end housing platform that fuses powerful lead generation with localized real estate expertise. Dan and John also talk about the strategic integration of Movoto’s 50 million annual visitors, the cultural alignment between teams, and how their retail and tech playbook is designed to rival giants like Zillow and Rocket.   Here’s what you’ll learn:   Lower acquired Movoto to own the lead funnel and scale nationally.Culture fit is key in merging teams and tech platforms.   Real estate agents remain central to the buyer experience.   Movoto brings high traffic and lead value to Lower’s ecosystem.   Lower OS uses AI and mobile tools to streamline transactions.   Dual-brand strategy positions Lower as an industry leader.   Related to this episode:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ⁠Lower acquires real estate portal Movoto | Housingwire⁠  https://www.housingwire.com/articles/lower-acquires-real-estate-portal-movoto/  ⁠Exclusive: Lower acquires software company Neat Labs | HousingWire⁠  https://www.housingwire.com/articles/lower-acquires-software-company-neat-labs/  ⁠Dan Snyder - Lower | LinkedIn⁠  https://www.linkedin.com/in/snyderdan/  ⁠John Berkowitz - Lower | LinkedIn⁠  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnberkowitz/  ⁠Lower.com⁠  https://www.lower.com/  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  The Power House podcast brings the biggest names in housing to answer hard-hitting questions about industry trends, operational and growth strategy, and leadership. Join HousingWire president Diego Sanchez every Thursday morning for candid conversations with industry leaders to learn how they’re differentiating themselves from the competition. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.

Transcript

00:00The nice thing is we have a reason to connect because I have a consumer that wants to buy a

00:03home. And it turns out that's a great way for a real estate agent loan officer to start hanging

00:08out. I'm so excited today for this conversation with Dan Snyder of Lower and John Berkowitz of

00:21Movoto. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you

00:26for having us. So first question is probably an obvious one. Dan, you're doing a lot of deals.

00:33The last time I spoke with you on Powerhouse, you had just acquired Neat Labs. Recently,

00:37you announced the acquisition of Movoto. What are you doing? What are you building?

00:43Yeah, I think, you know, times like these or any time that you have to take advantage when you can.

00:48And so, I mean, this all came about by way of actually trying to get leads.

00:56And so, you know, we had brought on Adam Weiner as our new president. He was former president of

01:02Redfin. He came in in January, maybe late last year, and oversees technology, data,

01:10direct-to-consumer. And, you know, he and I had been talking about where else can we get

01:15some purchase leads? He knew of Ojo Movoto, Austin-based. He's in Austin. And then he called

01:22me up was like, hey, instead of just leads, what do you think about the whole, the whole

01:27shooting match? And what was really appealing is, you know, when you look at the trends of,

01:34you know, where we'll call it like the industry of housing is going and even consumer, like take

01:40outside of like maybe the economics and just look at the business side. You've got a bank rate,

01:47big provider leads, they've got their own mortgage company. Nerd Wallet, they've got their own

01:51mortgage company. Rocket, Redfin, you know, like what Zillow's doing. So this consolidation of just

01:59consumer top of funnel with lender, I mean, there's a little bit of a risk there. If you're, you know,

02:04a national lender like us or any, they're trying to like, how do you get leads for your originators?

02:09What if they all go away one day? And so, I don't know, we wanted to own some level of the top of

02:16funnel and, you know, met John, met the team and worked out a pretty good deal for both people.

02:21John, you know about leads. I do know about leads. What excited you about bringing leads and really

02:28the whole Movoto ecosystem into the lower platform? Yeah, I think we, about this time last year,

02:37realized to really run a successful consumer portal, you needed real estate agent and loan officer

02:45partnered in serving the consumer as one. Like you just can't run a good business for the consumer

02:51or the economics of running the standalone business without that. And so we went on a journey to find

02:57the right way to get bigger and find the right products. And kind of our criteria, you know,

03:04if you're thinking about, you're going to bring your company into another company, you need a few

03:09things. One, you need culture fit. It's an easy one. It's cliche, but it's very real when you've hired

03:14hundreds of talented people. Right. And super important. It's, you know, everybody underestimates

03:19it. The culture fit is absurd. I mean, you have, Dan has assembled, I believe, the best team in the

03:26industry. I mean, there's humble, hungry, focused on the right things. And I'll get to that in a second.

03:34The next is you, you need retail. And that's the thing everybody misses. You can just say like, oh,

03:43I need mortgage products for my consumers. But, you know, Rocket and Zillow are touching every

03:48American yet have a handful of percentage points, less than 10% total together of the market because

03:55transactions are happening locally. And we have the consumer and real estate side. We needed

04:01a well executed retail strategy, which is there just aren't that many companies out there that

04:07have that. And we need to be able to look at our consumer and agent partners and say,

04:11we found a world-class mortgage product for you, which, I mean, I don't, I don't think people fully

04:17understand how well executed of a mortgage company lower. So we've now brought up Rocket and Zillow a

04:25couple of times. I would love to hear from you how you're thinking about this really end-to-end

04:32platform that you're building. How is this different from what Rocket and Zillow are building?

04:38Well, I mean, first, like we were working on this long before that announcement happened.

04:44When that announcement happened, you know, it was like, wow, okay, I guess we're on the right track.

04:48This is, this is happening. How long have you guys been talking?

04:51End of last year. End of last year. Oh, wow. Okay. Wow.

04:55Yeah. And these things don't come together, you know, at a, of course that quickly. I mean,

04:59so it takes, it takes a while because you want to make sure it's going to align and everyone has a,

05:05you know, like you've got a, a unified plan, so to speak. Otherwise, you know, like some stakeholders

05:12won't, we'll get left out. So we figured that out and we're doing it. So how is it different?

05:16Yeah. Um, I think what he, he said, I mean, if you're a, you know, the purchase market is hyper

05:24local, like even within a city, even within a small city, the suburbs are typically owned by

05:32various top realtors, not just one person owns a city. And so, you know, Movoto generates,

05:39you know, even though, and I keep saying this, it's not a knock, it's not a household name,

05:43like a Zillow, which is fine, but it generates insane traffic and leads insane. I mean, it's 150,

05:49150 million unique visitors a year, generating 700,000 qualified leads a year.

05:56That's the lowest market that we've seen on the internet and housing.

05:59Right. Exactly. I mean, it's a, and so that's a very rare asset.

06:04Yep. And something that you can't even, you would be very, it'd be very difficult to recreate today,

06:10is a national real estate portal. So, and then, but the customer is the realtor. They're the,

06:15they're the star of the show. And so they are getting that consumer. Um, they're getting the

06:20consumers, you know, find, find their dream home. They're working at the consumer. And then the

06:24mortgage attach happens hyper local, not through a call center. Okay. And I think that's going to be,

06:31I'm sure. I mean, there's a lot of smart people at rocket. I'm sure they've thought about how they're

06:34going to solve that. I just, you know, in the, I travel market to market and it's just, uh,

06:40I meet with realtors and it's just, uh, getting them to send it into through lower.com is hard.

06:46And they want to work with someone local. Yeah. Okay. But can you just dive into that a little

06:50bit more when you say that the handoff happens hyper local, what's the mechanism for that? Uh,

06:57going from the real estate agent who has gotten the Movoto lead to the lower LO that's local.

07:05How does that transition happen? Well, take, take the lower LO out of it for a second.

07:09Yeah. Right. The, the, the realtors, or if you want to speak to it and then I can.

07:14Yeah. I mean, the, the process is consumer searching on the web doesn't want to talk to

07:18anybody for a long period of time. Our system's learning about them, trying to kind of personalize

07:23the experience. Eventually they say, I want to go see a home, which is the main action that

07:28consumers actually want to do as their serious first step. Uh, they, they call in, we then have

07:35a live conversation with them, figure out what they really need. If they are ready, willing and able,

07:40we're warm transferring them to a highly qualified real estate agent. And that's like the first order

07:45of business for us is world-class real estate agent who really does transactions is not a tourist

07:52agent who does this as a profession. We partner with them. And then we're finding out, is that

07:57consumer pre-qualified and creating that connection between the consumer, the agent, the LO, and then

08:03helping the LO and the agent work together to serve that consumer using technology, live conversation.

08:09So, um, 150 million unique visitors. I assume that's nationwide and they're probably pockets of

08:17strength based on it's really, we are, we are everywhere. So like, uh, that means lower needs

08:24to be really nationwide. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah. This is, uh, this integration channel. I mean,

08:30you have really two sides of it. You've got the technology side and, uh, and I feel capable with

08:37the team they have. Plus when you insert an Adam and his experience is one of the big things. I mean,

08:43as CEO, I'm only as good as the top talent on the team and you gotta, you know, like this is like

08:50almost a perfect fit to use Adam's strengths. I mean, he built Redfin number from 07 to through

08:56public offering. He knows he's made tons of mistakes. He knows exactly how to run a portal.

09:02And then we have the opportunity. So there's that side of the fence, get traffic up, keep cranking out

09:08more. And then the other side is like integrating at scale, this coverage, you know? And so it's

09:17attracting top loan officers that can handle the pockets. We don't have branches is a thing we're

09:23working on right now. And then connecting our branches with these realtors that are already on

09:29the Voto platform, introducing them. And it's a ground game. Yeah. I imagine that's a pretty interesting

09:36pitch, uh, to folks that you're trying to recruit. Hey, I've got the 700,000 leads or however many

09:44it is in that particular geo, come, come get them. And I think the leads are important. What the leads

09:51really bring are the top real estate agents in the country to the table. And if you're a top local LO,

09:58the most important thing to you is not 10 internet leads. That's nice. That grows your business.

10:02It is a deep relationship with the top real estate agent, which this opens the door for

10:08and creates the kind of working relationship. But a lot of that, a lot of those relationships

10:12are built, like you said, grassroots local. Does that mean that you need to start like bringing

10:17people together on a local basis and doing kind of local grassroots media? Yeah. Oh, that's cool.

10:22Yeah. But also we have the, the nice thing is we have a reason to connect because I have a consumer

10:27that wants to buy a home. Right. And it turns out that's a great way for a real estate agent,

10:31a loan officer to start hanging out. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You talked

10:35about integration a little bit. So last time we spoke, you're building a lot of your mortgage

10:41tech platform internally and you've built up a pretty amazing tech at Movoto. How do you bring

10:48these two tech teams and these two platforms together? Is Adam in charge of that? Or like,

10:54how does that go? Yeah. Adam's Adam's in charge of all that. Yeah. And they're, they're really

10:59two separate platforms. You've got the, like on the real estate side itself. And then our single

11:05focus on our roadmap within lower has been, you know, rolling out lower OS, which will be,

11:14you know, point of sale, LOS pricing engine, all wrapped under one, you know, congruent system that,

11:22you know, it, it, it, it sounds crazy, but it'll be very mobile friendly and you won't have to,

11:30you can use it online. You don't have to have a special, you know, like within compass, you don't

11:35have to have a special permission to go onto their web version. Like many lenders have that aren't even

11:40on the web version yet. You know, you, you will be able to have multiple people in one file.

11:45Yeah. Like things that are, you would think are table stakes. And when I tell people that aren't in

11:49the, like the mortgage industry, they, they don't, they're like, so how is it a game changer? I'm

11:54like, well, you know, you don't have to download it under their laptop. You can go online. And they're

12:01like, wow, okay, that'll be like that, you know, and then we're doing a ton of stuff with AI and

12:07natively putting it into our system. So we're really excited for that. We actually closed our first loan

12:11through it, which is ahead of schedule and we're rolling it out early next year. Cool. That's very cool.

12:18Um, all right. So, uh, Dan, the last time I talked with you, uh, when, when you just acquired neat labs,

12:24uh, you were like, uh, you know, I'm going to work on integration for a bit. I'm not out hunting for

12:28deals. So obviously that, that wasn't completely true. Right. Um, are you out hunting for more deals

12:34right now? Like, how are you? No, no. I mean, I don't, I mean, we, I think, I mean, we're never out

12:39hunting, but we're trying to be opportunistic. Yeah. I mean, this came by way of a relationship and,

12:45you know, we, we thought, wow, okay, this is a rare asset, a really good team and we can get it at a

12:54really, you know, kind of a fair deal for our shareholders. It, um, it, I don't expect a bunch

13:00of things like that to walk across my desk every day, but we're not, I don't have like a M and A team

13:06out hunting for deals. So before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about

13:12servicing. Uh, and, uh, if you think about end to end home ownership platform, uh, now you've got,

13:19you've got the leads, you've got the real estate platform, obviously you have the, the, the,

13:24nationwide distributed retail for, for mortgage. Um, what you don't have is what happens to that

13:31mortgage, uh, once it's originated. How are you thinking about servicing in terms of the strategy

13:37for this platform that you're, that you're building? I mean, I like optionality. So we have,

13:42we do have a servicing platform. We have the ability to service loans. So we do service loans today.

13:46Yeah. What percentage of, I mean, we're 50, 50% will retain, but we treat every customer as if they're

13:55going to be a customer for life, every customer. It, it was a lot easier when you were maybe

14:00battling against the big banks because they didn't have the tech. And now the amount of money

14:06that's being spent, the amount of, uh, reliance on these servicing books that some of these big

14:10players have is just, um, you know, they're going to protect their book and it'll be interesting to

14:17see how it all plays out. Cause I can tell you at, you know, some of the, the outlets we're selling our

14:23loans to, uh, you know, customer might call our LO back and you know, the LO goes through the process,

14:30they get their payoff, but the payoff is delayed by seven days so that the servicer has can like scoop

14:36in and retain it. That's, that's a challenge. I mean, that's a very big challenge and, um,

14:41we might start servicing more. Um, you know, certainly you can still deploy the same consumer

14:46tech to monitor your customers, stay out ahead of the customers, kind of mitigate it. But you know,

14:51it's, um, the next, um, we keep saying one's the next refi wave for the last year after year after

14:57year. So whenever that does happen and rates do drop some, it'll be interesting to see how,

15:02you know, how, how does, um, how does some of these bigger, you know, big competitors compete?

15:08Well, there were two golden weeks in Q3 of 2024 where rates dipped and you did see those servicers

15:15get out there and do some recapture. Uh, so I guess you got to prepare for that.

15:20Yeah. And you know, they're going to try, but they're not going to capture as much as they

15:23think either. Yeah. Um, so John, we'll, we'll close with you. Uh, your, your new title is president

15:29of real estate at lower. Um, what does that mean? Uh, what's, what's your strategy for that role?

15:36What are you going to keep building at, at Movoto as part of this lower platform?

15:40Yeah. I'm only like two weeks on the job, so I'm still figuring it out, but I mean, really my day

15:44job doesn't change. I got to go out and make Movoto a world-class platform for consumers,

15:49agents, and now get those consumers and agents connected with our awesome retail operations.

15:54And, you know, I got to go out there and knife fight against the giants and use our assets to,

16:00to kind of draft and pass the competition. And so, you know, it's, it's all day,

16:04every day figuring out how to make Movoto grow and support the partners better.

16:08So just kidding. One last question. Uh, Movoto, you said it wasn't as big a brand as some of

16:13these other ones, but it's still a brand. Uh, does that brand live on as part of this lower

16:18ecosystem? How do you think, how do you deal with the different brands that are under the umbrella?

16:21Lower is the brand that we need the whole world to know. I mean, I mean, it's pretty, these are two

16:27incredible companies that not enough people know. You've got to choose a lead horse. Lower,

16:31frankly, if you just ask a brand person is a better brand. So lower will be the company brand.

16:36You'll see it show up on Movoto. You'll show them the products, changing Movoto.com. Given that asset

16:42is a 20 year asset. Basically the reason no one else can do it is because of Movoto.com. It's the SEO.

16:47We're probably not going to change the name, but you will, what I call it, the project lower-fying

16:51Movoto. And so we'll bridge them together. There'll be a good meta Facebook like relationship and we'll,

16:58we'll tell the world, but lower is the one that I guarantee a year from now, there's not a person in this

17:02industry that doesn't know lower. He'll be on main stage. Amazing. Guys, this has been awesome.

17:08What a great conversation. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Awesome. Appreciate you.

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