Housing site Funda scraps plans to enter mortgage market

Housing website Funda has scrapped its long-cherished plans to enter the mortgage market. The “intended outcomes” for its own mortgage product did not materialize, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Financieele Dagblad (FD).

“A lot of research is involved in developing a distinctive, accessible online mortgage product,” the spokesperson said. The company has reviewed the “possible outcomes” and concluded, “that we will not continue with this project.”

Funda has long wanted to enter the mortgage market and even fought with its major shareholder, the realtors’ association NVM, about the matter. Funda felt that the NVM was preventing it from creating a Funda mortgage, and the conflict escalated to the case being fought out before the Enterprise Chamber, according to FD. In 2022, NVM decided to stop blocking a Funda mortgage, and Funda announced that it would appoint more people to work on the product.

But a few weeks ago, Funda informed its shareholders that it has stopped developing its own mortgage. The project proved “substantively, financially, and legally” too complex. The Funda spokesperson would not go into further details for FD, only saying that a “distinctive” mortgage project turned out to be “not easy” and “there is no solid basis for scaling up.”