Lower’s John Berkowitz on building lead generation certainty with Movoto Advantage

After being acquired by mortgage lender Lower in May 2025, executives at real estate listing portal Movoto said they hoped to use Lower’s network to connect more consumers with top local real estate agents and mortgage professionals.

This vision — which was first explained to HousingWire by John Berkowitz, former Movoto CEO and current president of real estate at Lower — appears to have started coming to fruition after the firm officially launched Movoto Advantage last week. 

Lower describes Movoto Advantage as a limited-access, subscription-based program that connects high-performing real estate agents with motivated home buyers and sellers through real-time live transfers.

The company said it initially began rolling out the program, which operates within Lower’s Movoto real estate marketplace, in late 2025. The program targets independent agents who rank near the top in their markets by transaction volume and have a history of closing deals, strong client service and consistent responsiveness.

Lower vets agents who apply to the program and it limits the number of participating agents, routing consumers to just one agent in a given market. Additionally, Movoto Advantage is integrated with Lower’s lending platform through Lower Connect, which pairs consumers and agents with Lower loan officers for fast preapproval and support through closing.

HousingWire recently caught up with Berkowitz to discuss how Movoto Advantage and Lower are looking to compete in the increasingly competitive listing portal and lead referral space. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Brooklee Han: Last year when we spoke, you outlined how you were hoping to leverage Lower’s network to help both housing professionals and consumers. Based on my understanding of the product, Movoto Advantage seems to closely align with this goal. Tell me more about the creation of the product and what challenges you’re hoping it will solve.

John Berkowitz: I think Movoto Advantage is filling a gap in the market and it is going to create more wins for agents, consumers and our mortgage partners.

Going back, Movoto was one of the first to launch a solution specifically for real estate teams with Movoto Pro+. Teams have unique models and they need unique products that fit their needs. Pro+ was one of the first to adjust the typical referral model and blend it with the hybrid lead model for teams. That launched in 2023. And now we have hundreds of teams on it, and over time we have seen some of our competitors roll out their own solutions for teams.

But not all agents aspire to grow massive real estate teams or be part of a team. Instead, they want to have their own brand and their own business, so in talking with them, we realized there was a gap in the market for products like Pro+ geared toward individual top agents.

The origin of Advantage was their needs, and one of the biggest needs they have is certainty. In a short sales cycle, they don’t have the time to pitch to a consumer why they are better than the six other agents the same platform connected them to. And a lot of those agents want to find a way to bring mortgage into their business without setting up their own joint venture or becoming dual licensed. 

This program provides agents with certainty because they know they are the only one we are connecting a given consumer with, and it allows them to have a mortgage partner in a regulatory compliant way.

Han: As I understand it, there is a vetting process for agents to be part of the program. Can you tell me more about this process and what Lower is looking for in a Movoto Advantage agent? 

Berkowitz: I proudly say we’re not interested in partnering with tourist agents. I have no problem with agents coming and going, but when we meet consumers, we are making a promise of selecting the right professional for them — and we believe that means that this will be a person who has a track record of success.

We are looking at historical transactions and volume, and we are looking for high response rates to make sure that when we introduce the agent to a consumer, that leads to the consumer successfully transacting. 

Han: There are so many different referral and lead generation platforms and programs out there. What do you think sets Movoto Advantage apart? 

Berkowitz: We are going to give agents certainty. We are not going to sign up every agent in the market. We are limiting this because a key part of the program is giving the agents consistency of introductions.

A lot of agents will sign up for a lead service, and then that service signs up everyone else in their market and they no longer get leads. So we provide them with the certainty that they will receive leads, allowing them to plan and build their business around it. 

Additionally, we are not giving them cold leads — these are warm transfers. We are really working on setting agents up for success by explaining to consumers why they are the right agent for them in their market. And we are making sure that when we transfer an agent a lead, that consumer is ready, willing and able to go buy or sell a home.

This means that we are not delivering them the vast majority of leads we have, because we are not trying to just deliver leads. We are trying to create warm relationships between a consumer that came to us to meet an expert and a professional that wants to serve them. So I think we set ourselves apart with that consistency of lead flow, met with the high quality of the consumers we are introducing them to. 

Han: The mortgage component of this is also interesting as we are currently seeing others work to integrate mortgages — including Zillow Home Loans and the Compass-Rocket-Redfin agreement. Can you tell me more about the mortgage component, and how this reflects the goal you mentioned last year for fostering connections between local mortgage professionals, agents and consumers?

Berkowitz: The simple answer is that what I told you about last year, we’ve done it and we’ve done it a lot faster than I thought. You’ll remember that a big difference between us and our competitors is local mortgage, retail, boots on the ground. Our top teams have told us that they want their mortgage professionals to be local — that’s a key part of our strategy. A top-performing agent is going to want the same thing, so we are really leaning into finding the best way to connect those agents with a great local loan officer. 

It is really just pulling on that thread of taking these consumers that are anonymously searching online and figuring out exactly what they need — and then, at the right time, live transferring them to local professionals and creating that connection with a local agent and loan officer. 

Agents really care about mortgages because most buyers require some sort of financing, so they need high-quality mortgage professionals to work with and help solve problems for their consumers. This also allows agents to reduce some of their costs in a regulatory compliant way because they can do a lead sharing agreement, which is what we have enabled here.

We are really trying to make it easier for consumers, agents and LOs to work together and connect. We are putting them on joint text and creating those relationships. So far, agents say this is working really well because they then have less manual work and it makes everything smoother for everyone. 

Han: It is no secret that there has been quite a bit of drama in the real estate portal and referral service space over the past year, but Movoto has managed to stay out of the fray. I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on the recent chaos.

Berkowitz: I think we’ve done a very good job of being Switzerland and just staying focused on our North Star, which is the consumer. Our goal is to provide them with accurate data and knowledgeable professionals. With agents, we really lean into appreciating the role they play in the transactions and providing them with the tools they need to serve those consumers even better. 

There are a lot of narratives out there now about how different initiatives are better for consumers or agents. But I think, for example, if you look at the evidence, there is no rational argument to say that private listings are good for consumers.

What I do see is CEOs doing what is best for their shareholders, which is fine, because that is who they answer to. But it also creates this opportunity for private companies to innovate, listen to their customers, and create the products and experiences they really want. I think it is really a competitive advantage for us right now to be a private company that doesn’t need big public narratives to rationalize things, because we are literally just doing what our customers are asking for.

Han: As we have discussed, last year when we spoke, you laid out this vision of where the company is now. If we talk again a year from now, what are you hoping to see for Lower and Movoto?

Berkowitz: I think we are just getting on this path of integrating the consumer, agent and LO. And I think you are going to see more products come out around these same themes that provide upfront value to consumers, earning their trust, and then bringing in a real estate agent and loan officer in a way that really works for them to build a relationship and make it economically viable for them, while also enabling them to add more value. We have been pulling on that thread since the day Lower and Movoto came together.