What is Rocket Mortgage?

Rocket Mortgage, LLC, formerly Quicken Loans LLC, is a mortgage lender. It is located in Downtown Detroit's One Campus Martius Building. The company was the largest U.S. retail lender and also the largest online retailer of mortgages in January 2018. Rocket Mortgage does not depend on deposits like other large mortgage lenders. Instead, it relies on wholesale financing to make its loans. It also uses an online application system rather than a branch. Rocket Mortgage also includes One Reverse Mortgage and Amrock. From 2013 to 2017, the company has closed over $400 billion in mortgage volume across all 50 US states.

Rock Financial was established in 1985 by Ron Berman and Lindsay Gross. Gilbert launched an IPO underwritten and funded by Bear Stearns in May 1998.

In the late 1990s, the company began to shift from being a traditional mortgage provider to becoming an online-focused lender. The fragmentation of the American home mortgage industry has been a problem. This is due to differences in regulations within each state and in every locality. Gilbert challenged this notion by offering online loan applications that were reviewed by experts in each region, but located at a central headquarters.

Quicken Loans

Intuit Inc., the makers of Quicken, TurboTax and QuickBooks, purchased Rock Financial Corp. in December 1999 for $532M. This was a year and a quarter after the IPO. Quicken Loans was created.

In June 2002 Dan Gilbert, two-and-a-half years after the sale of the company, led a small group private investors to purchase the Quicken Loans subsidiary from Intuit for $64M.

Quicken Loans was named as a defendant in a lawsuit class action filed against them in 2004. The lawsuit was brought against Quicken Loans on behalf of employees who were loan consultants at any Quicken office in the last three years. Quicken failed to pay overtime for plaintiffs who worked beyond 40 hours per week, according to the claimants. Quicken Loans refuted these claims and stated that it was not aware of any violations of the FLSA. A federal jury ruled in favor of Quicken Loans on March 17, 2011. This ended the seven-year-old lawsuit. Quicken Loans has been ruled not to pay overtime to plaintiffs.

The entire mortgage industry was faced with a crisis in August 2007 when it couldn't obtain new credit from banks and hedge funds. Quicken Loans was shut down in response.

Second mortgages

Home equity lines credit (HELOC).

Alt-A products

Deferred interest loans

Gilbert announced on November 12, 2007 that he had reached a development agreement to relocate the company's headquarters downtown and consolidate suburban offices. The agreement reserved two construction sites for development: the former Hudson's and Statler Hotel locations on Grand Circus Park. Quicken Loans relocated its downtown headquarters to August 2010. The city welcomed 1,700 employees at the time.

An old logo for Quicken Loans

Rock Holdings, which had acquired One Reverse Mortgage in the spring 2008, entered the reverse mortgage market.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, there was a slight drop in employment.

Quicken has leased office space at the Compuware building, which faces Campus Martius Park, since 2009. The company houses its employees in the First National Building, The Qube and Chrysler House in Downtown Detroit.

Quicken Loans was the 2nd largest US mortgage lender in 2014. It is still the largest national online lender of mortgages. It employs approximately 24,000 people in the United States, while 17,000 are based in Detroit. This makes it Detroit's largest employer and minority employer.

Quicken Loans was the largest national mortgage lender in January 2018.

Quicken Loans parent Rock Holding purchased Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com (IAC) in August 2018.

Quicken Loans, a Canadian lender, announced its expansion into Canada on October 15th by opening a new tech center in downtown Windsor.

Quicken Loans consistently has been the recipient of the highest customer satisfaction rating from primary mortgage originators in the U.S., for 10 consecutive years. According to Consumers Advocate, Quicken Loans is also a top choice for best mortgage lenders overall and one of the top 20 companies to work at.

Quicken Loans filed paperwork with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on July 7, 2020 to begin the process of making the company public under the brand Rocket Companies.

Rocket Companies, Inc., which raised $1.8 billion, went public on August 6, 2020 under the symbol RKT.

Quicken Loans originated more than 1.1 million loans in 2020 valued at $313 Billion. These figures are nearly twice the amount of United Wholesale Mortgage, the second largest lender in America, also located near Detroit.

Quicken Loans announced on May 12, 2021 that Rocket Mortgage would become its new brand by July 31, 2021.

Rocket Mortgage

Rocket Mortgage was created by Quicken Loans in 2015. It is the first lender to offer electronic closings (eClosings), in all 50 US states. TechCrunch proclaimed it the "iPhone moment in the mortgage industry" and compared its application process to TurboTax. Rocket holds three patents relating to verifying client data and filtering and sourcing it. Rocket also has patents pertaining to extracting it from outside parties. It also filed a patent in 2019 for data set selection with multi-source constraints. In October 2020, the most recent patent was filed regarding data set extraction from external data storage.

Rocket closed $7 billion of loans in its first year. J.D. Power named Rocket Mortgage #1 in America for client satisfaction in primary mortgage origination. This was the 11th consecutive year Rocket Mortgage or Quicken Loans have been awarded this honor. Rocket subsidiary Amrock had closed more than 1,000,000 digital mortgages by 2021.

Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse is an arena in Cleveland, Ohio, sponsored by Rocket. It's home to the Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA) as well as the American Hockey League's Cleveland Monsters. After the completion of its renovation and expansion, the arena was formerly called the Quicken Loans Arena.

Rocket Mortgage launched several initiatives to support its home communities in Detroit, Cleveland and Charlotte. These include veteran homelessness and digital literacy.

This post was written in 22 MAY 2022