Making main street visible again

How Rocket Pro's BrokerNearMe.com is restoring visibility — and profitability — to independent mortgage brokers

Independent mortgage brokers built Main Street housing markets long before "digital leads" existed. They know the local builders, the school districts, and the families buying their first homes.

Yet in an era where 95 percent of homebuyers start their search online, those same brokers have become nearly invisible. Search algorithms and paid-lead sites push various lenders to the top, and local expertise gets buried under ad spend.

That invisibility isn't just unfair, it's expensive. Many brokers spend thousands each year buying leads that convert at barely 2 percent. Rocket Pro saw that imbalance and decided to fix it with BrokerNearMe.com, a consumer-facing directory designed to put brokers back on the digital map — literally.

"Visibility should never be a luxury," said Matt Baldwin, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Rocket Pro. "Every independent broker deserves the same digital discoverability as a national brand, and that's why we've built this."

A Simple Idea with Outsize Impact

Unveiled at RPX 2025 to a standing-room-only crowd, BrokerNearMe.com functions like a digital storefront for the broker community. Consumers can search by ZIP code and connect instantly with verified local professionals.

In the first month, nearly 20,000 broker profiles were added to BrokerNearMe.com, and over 7,000 consumers searched for local mortgage expertise*. Early users in Texas, Florida, and Michigan are already seeing how the site helps match them with consumers looking for local mortgage expertise.

"We built BrokerNearMe.com to close the distance between digital curiosity and local expertise," said Kyle Schoenmaker, Vice President of Sales. "When a borrower's first click connects them to a mortgage broker, everybody wins."

Visibility = Viability

BrokerNearMe.com isn't another tech experiment; it's an economic equalizer. Brokers who once relied on referrals now get organic, free traffic from buyers searching their area. Each profile is indexed by search engines, effectively turning every participating broker into their own local brand.

That matters because visibility is now the broker's most measurable ROI. When a broker controls their digital presence instead of renting it from a lead aggregator, they keep both the margin and the relationship.

And the timing couldn't be better: 2025 market volatility has made every lead more precious. Visibility converts directly into survival.

A Platform That Protects Independence

Rocket Pro's leaders are adamant that BrokerNearMe.com's value lies in what it doesn't do: harvest data or insert the company between broker and borrower. All inquiries route directly to the broker, and ownership stays local.

Closing the Consumer Trust Gap

According to the National Association of Realtors 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers report, home searches are digital; decisions are local. Buyers typically moved just 20 miles and were far likelier to engage a nearby, known pro — half of sellers reused the same agent to buy, jumping to 71% when buying within 10 miles.

BrokerNearMe.com bridges that divide by giving consumers a simple, credible way to discover independent brokers nearby, turning passive online searches into local connections.

It's a new kind of digital trust infrastructure for Main Street, doing for brokers what Yelp and Google Reviews did for neighborhood businesses a decade ago: creating transparency that builds confidence. When consumers can see real faces, proximity, and expertise - not just rates - trust follows naturally.

From Local Brands to National Momentum

Beyond lead generation, BrokerNearMe.com acts as a collective brand engine for the entire broker community. For the first time, independent professionals appear under a single, searchable ecosystem - one that scales their visibility without sacrificing individuality.

For brokers, visibility is no longer optional. BrokerNearMe.com offers three tangible wins:

1. Discoverability without dependence. Free, organic exposure that levels the playing field with national lenders.
2. Local credibility on a digital scale. Borrowers can finally find and vet nearby experts with confidence.
3. Technology that protects autonomy. Every inquiry, every client, every relationship stays in the broker's hands.
   

In a world where algorithms decide who gets seen, Rocket Pro is handing the microphone back to the people who built the business. BrokerNearMe.com isn't about chasing clicks — it's about reclaiming relevance.

Claim your profile and help make Main Street visible again at BrokerNearMe.com.

About Rocket Pro:
Rocket Pro is a division of Rocket Mortgage (NMLSConsumerAccess.org #3030) and a part of Rocket Companies, Inc. (NYSE: RKT). It works exclusively with mortgage brokers, community banks and credit unions. Rocket Pro's partners provide the face-to-face service their clients desire, while tapping into the technology, expertise and award-winning process from Rocket Mortgage. The partner loan officer creates, and maintains, the relationship with the client. Rocket Mortgage approves, underwrites, processes and closes the loan in its name – or sells the loan to Rocket Mortgage after the mortgage closes if it was originated as a correspondent loan. For more information, visit RocketPro.com.

Citations: https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/research-reports/highlights-from-the-profile-of-home-buyers-and-sellers

Disclaimers:
*Based on internal Rocket Mortgage data.