Mortgage Consolidation in 2026 Has Reached Every Layer of the Stack
For the last few years, consolidation in mortgage mostly meant lenders. This year, deals are happening across the whole industry. National Mortgage News called 2026 the year of consolidation in August, noting that deals had arrived steadily since the first week of January. Brokerage, servicing, origination, capital markets, verification, valuation, quality control and title have all seen major transactions, and many of them were announced with a clear growth or technology rationale.
Deal activity, layer by layer
Brokerage. Compass completed its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate on January 9 in an all-stock deal valued at around $1.6 billion. The deal brought Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby's International Realty, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Corcoran and ERA under one company, along with Anywhere's franchise, title and escrow, and relocation businesses, which bring in over a billion dollars in revenue on their own. The combined company serves more than 340,000 real estate professionals across roughly 1.2 million transactions a year, and Compass targeted more than $225 million in operating expense synergies.
Servicing. On February 11, Pennymac agreed to buy Cenlar's subservicing business for $172.5 million upfront, plus up to $85 million in contingent payments over three years. The deal adds as much as $740 billion in subserviced unpaid principal balance and about two million loans, which would take Pennymac past a trillion dollars in total servicing and into second place nationally. It was the first acquisition in Pennymac's history. The company said it wants to run its own servicing technology across a much larger base and grow fee-based revenue.
Mortgage REITs and origination. CrossCountry Mortgage completed its acquisition of Two Harbors on August 25 at $12.00 per share. The process started with a signed agreement with United Wholesale Mortgage in December and ended with CrossCountry raising its offer three times.
Capital markets and investor lending. Figure agreed in June to acquire Kiavi for $717 million and completed the deal on September 1. Figure took on Kiavi's technology and operating platform, while a joint venture with Sixth Street took the balance sheet assets. Kiavi had generated over $250 million in revenue and over $100 million in EBITDA the year before.
Verification, valuation and quality control. This is the layer where many software companies in our industry sell. In August, Checkr, the parent of verification platform Truework, agreed to acquire Truv, which adds asset verification and government benefit data to its wage and employment offering. Class Valuation merged with Allstate Appraisal, a firm that opened in 1959. Atlas VMS agreed to acquire First Appraisal Management in Texas and named its managing partner EVP of appraisal solutions. Earlier in the year, ACES Quality Management acquired the data quality platform Basecap Analytics, and Experian agreed to acquire Own Up.
Title and escrow. Propy, a technology company, secured a $100 million credit facility from Metropolitan Partners Group in February and has been acquiring regional title firms with $5 million to $20 million in revenue. It keeps the local teams in place and uses automation to raise volume and margin.
All of this happened within about eight months.
What this means for mortgage software
Consolidation among customers creates opportunity for the software underneath them. Inside Mortgage Finance data shows the top ten lenders took about 43% of total production from January through September 2025, up from 41% in 2024 and 38.5% the year before. Larger customers make larger platform decisions, and those decisions tend to last.
The deals this year show it. Pennymac says the Cenlar deal lets it spread its own servicing technology across two million more loans. Carrington says its Valon acquisition makes ValonOS its core servicing platform. In both cases, technology is a central reason for the deal.
Buyers of mortgage companies and software companies are looking at technology the same way. Attorneys at the New England Mortgage Expo said technology vision now sits near the top of the diligence list, along with whether a company's systems can support growth and integrate with other platforms after close. A company with a clear roadmap and deep integration is well positioned for that conversation.
That is especially true for systems of record. Loan origination, servicing, pricing and quality control carry compliance requirements inside the product, have long replacement cycles, and connect deeply to the rest of a lender's stack. Those are the qualities buyers look for in mission-critical software.
A market with options for owners
Each of these deals started with an owner or a board deciding to join something larger. Some were opportunistic and some followed a formal process. According to the M&A attorneys working the middle of this market, many owners are using this period to plan their next chapter, including putting a succession plan in place for the first time.
Buyers are active at every layer, and they include strategic acquirers, private equity firms and long-term owners. Owners who start early have more say in who they partner with, how the deal is structured and when it happens.
We aren't saying anyone should rush. We are saying that the question of who owns your business long term is worth answering on your own timeline, and this is a good time to start thinking about it.
Meet us at MBA Annual
Andromeda will have a presence at the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Convention and Expo (MBA Annual) through Orion, our mortgage vertical group. If you own or run a mortgage software or services business and want to talk about ownership, succession or what a permanent home looks like, we would welcome the conversation.