Chicago, Ill.-based Rose Mortgage Company shut its doors this week, sources have informed Housing Wire. The company was a subprime wholsesaler operating in 10 states, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, California, Florida and Arizona. The company was founded in 2000 as a family business, led by Bernie Glavin Jr., and at of the start of 2005 had funded more than 25,000 subprime loans. In 2004, Rose Mortgage was one of the leading subprime wholesale operations in the Midwest, with wholesale manager Cheryl Rubenzer named “Wholesale Manager of the Year” by the Illinois Association of Mortgage Brokers.
Records with the state of Illinois show that Rose Mortgage was cited in August 2004 by the state’s Department of Financial and Professional Regulation for making false advertising claims and violating TILA. The company was found to be advertising rates that were lower than the true annualized rates charged on the loans they offered. Calls for comment regarding the company’s closure were not returned by press time. The Mortgage Bankers Association has said it expects hundreds of mortgage lenders to go out of business this year, as the mortgage lending industry sheds what MBA economist Doug Duncan has called “excess origination capacity” created during the recent housing boom.
