Quicken Cashes In on the Mortgage Refi Boom

No company has taken better advantage of the refinancing boom than Quicken Loans. The Detroit-based firm was the 34th-biggest mortgage lender in 2006. Last year, Quicken overtook Citigroup as the nation’s fifth-ranked mortgage lender in the third quarter. The $25 billion in loans it made during the fourth quarter pushed it past U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America into the No. 3 spot, behind Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. For the full year, lending jumped to $70 billion, up from $30 billion in 2011, with refis accounting for 85 percent of the total. “Our mission is to do as much or more than we did last year,” says Chief Executive Officer Bill Emerson. “There’s a massive market out there, and 93 out of 100 people still wake up and go somewhere else.”

For lenders able to withstand the housing bust, business is way up. New loans rose 22 percent in 2012, to $1.8 trillion, as the Federal Reserve drove 30-year mortgage rates to record lows and President Barack Obama expanded federal refinancing programs. Retreats by Bank of America and other large lenders left a “tremendous amount of market share available,” says John Robbins, CEO of Bexil American Mortgage.