Rocket Companies CEO: Here’s How to Fix the Housing Crisis
a16z Podcast
Nov 12
Rocket Companies CEO: Here’s How to Fix the Housing Crisis
Rocket Companies CEO: Here’s How to Fix the Housing Crisis

a16z Podcast
Nov 12
Shownote
Shownote
The Empire State Building took 110 days to build—today, changing a window would take two years. Alex Rampell (a16z) and Varun Krishna (Rocket CEO) expose how asset inflation turned housing from the American Dream into a wealth transfer machine where the ...
Highlights
Highlights
The housing market stands at a crossroads, where technological innovation meets decades of systemic inertia. Once a symbol of accessible prosperity, homeownership has become increasingly out of reach for many, not due to lack of demand or construction capability, but because of deep structural and financial shifts. This conversation peels back the layers of a system burdened by regulatory hurdles, misaligned incentives, and missed opportunities for integration—revealing how one company is betting big on transforming the entire homebuying journey.
Chapters
Chapters
Why housing is fintech’s last great frontier
00:00How asset inflation is pricing out a generation
04:46Can technology overcome the building freeze?
07:05Building homes like cars: the modular revolution
12:52The long game: banks and the mortgage payoff timeline
19:54Why the mortgage maze needs a makeover
22:19From lender to lifetime partner: Rocket’s transformation
27:42Buying the whole funnel: Rocket’s supercharged strategy
35:21Can AI finally fix the broken homebuying journey?
52:54Transcript
Transcript
Varun Krishna: Housing, in some sense for me, is like that final frontier of fintechs, sort of the end goal for most consumers. All of fintech, in some ways, leads to a consumer caring fundamentally about generational wealth. And generational wealth, it co...