THE LEAD
The 2025 Ohio purchase mortgage market data is out. $34.2 billion. 131,000 loans. 826 lenders competing for Ohio homebuyers.
In 2025 independent mortgage companies wrote 60.8% of Ohio purchase originations, up 2.3% from their combined market share in 2024. Banks gave that ground back, dropping from 35.9% to 33.5%. Credit unions held essentially flat at 5.7%.
All this great data comes from the fine folks at iEmergent, a family owned company that provides great data at a fraction of the cost of their competitors. Hit up my friend Bernard Nossuli if interested in learning more.
Top 25 Ohio purchase mortgage lenders, 2025 vs 2024 ranking:
CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC (Westlake OH) $2.11B -- was #3
Huntington National Bank (Columbus OH) $1.71B -- was #1
United Wholesale Mortgage (Plymouth MI) $1.39B -- was #4
Rocket Mortgage (Plymouth MI) $1.23B -- was #2
Union Home Mortgage Corp. Home Mortgage (Strongsville OH) $1.01B -- was #7
Union Savings Bank (Cincinnati OH) $1.00B -- was #5
NFM Lending (Sparks MD) $811M -- was #11
Fifth Third Bank (Cincinnati OH) $809M -- was #6
JPMorganChase (Columbus OH) $699M -- was #8
Mortgage Research Center (Columbia MO) $686M -- was #10
Guaranteed Rate (Chicago IL) $650M -- was #9
NVR, Inc. Mortgage Finance (Reston VA) $601M -- was #13
Third Federal Savings and Loan (Cleveland OH) $590M -- was #12
Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation (Madison WI) $543M -- was #15
Wright-Patt Credit Union (Beavercreek OH) $529M -- was #14
M/I Financial, LLC (Columbus OH) $474M -- was #21
Howard Hanna Financial Services, Inc. (Pittsburgh PA) $463M -- was #25
Pulte Mortgage (Bloomfield Hills MI) $451M -- was #23
Victory Mortgage (Louisville KY) $441M -- was #28
Ruoff Mortgage (Fort Wayne IN) $401M -- was #17
U.S. Bank (Cincinnati OH) $373M -- was #19
Lower (Columbus OH) $362M -- was #18
DHI Mortgage (Austin TX) $345M -- was #30
WesBanco Bank (Wheeling WV) $312M -- was #50
First Financial Bank (Cincinnati OH) $310M -- was #26
CHART OF THE DAY
O-H!
ATTENTION. TRUST. COMMUNITY.
In almost every industry, the marketing game is about earning three things. Attention. Trust. Community.
Get those right, demand follows. Get them wrong, you become invisible.
The mortgage space, and the vendors, tech firms, and service providers orbiting it, routinely gets them wrong.
Why? Because these are not easy businesses to market. They are complex, compliance-heavy, and not exactly the kind of content that stops a scroll. Lending money to people and charging monthly SaaS fees for software are, objectively, not thrilling topics.
But instead of trying harder, most settle for less.
Three low-effort LinkedIn posts per week. Company pages that read like they were written by someone's most cautious lawyer. No storytelling. No differentiation. No discernible pulse.
Meanwhile, other industries are proving every day that boring categories are a choice, not a sentence.
BlendJet went viral not by pitching blenders, but by blending increasingly unhinged things on TikTok. Nobody was waiting for blender content. Nobody asked for it. They made it impossible to look away.
Liquid Death made canned water feel like a rebellion. Canned water. The least interesting product in the history of commerce. They branded it like an energy drink for people who hate energy drink culture and built a company worth over a billion dollars. It's water.
Duolingo's unhinged green owl threatens users, attends celebrity funerals, and picks fights with competitors on TikTok. It is a language learning app. It has thirty million social media followers. Nobody saw that coming, least of all Duolingo.
None of this was about features or price or compliance-approved copy. It was about being worth someone's thirty seconds of attention.
Here is the good news. In mortgage, the bar is still so low you can step over it without breaking stride. Rocket figured this out. Mr. Cooper figured this out before selling to Rocket for $14.2 billion.
The opportunity is still wide open. Because attention, trust, and community are not optional anymore. They are the whole game.
The three gravestones of modern brand marketing. Dead and buried by the same playbook that was supposed to keep them alive.
THE ROOM YOU WANT TO BE IN THIS JUNE
Six keynotes. Twenty one breakouts. Sixteen Ohio's Own honorees. Lots of parties and meals. Three days at a gorgeous property in one of the gems of the Midwest ... Columbus, OH.
The 2026 Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association Conference is going to be one of the best state mortgage conferences this industry has ever hosted, and I am not saying that because I run the thing.
I am saying it because of the slate:
✔️ AI governance and AI in the pipeline
✔️ Credit reporting overhaul
✔️ Growing revenue & competing with the megas
✔️ Cap markets, construction, servicing, secondary, MSR
✔️ Data and analytics for originations & operations leaders
✔️ The Ohio landscape from the seats that actually shape policy and capital flow
✔️ Leadership, recruiting, and the next cycle of talent
If you are a CEO, CFO, production head, ops head, CCO, CIO, marketing lead, or top producer, there is a session built for your seat. And there are four more you will want to be in anyway.
And if you are the rising star on the team, the ops lead being groomed for SVP, the producer being built into a branch manager, the analyst ready for the next seat, this is the conference where careers get accelerated.
Employers, hear me on this one. You can send your top performer to a steakhouse. Or you can send them to three days in a room with the who's who of the mortgage industry, leading panels, holding court in the hallways, and sharing the playbooks they are actually running. One will get you a thank you card. The other will get you a leader.
It is the best development money you are going to spend all year. And the best reward you can hand a high performer is a seat at a table they have not sat at yet.
Sunday June 14 to Tuesday June 16. Click HERE for more details.
The 59th Annual will be our biggest ever. With a couple more big name keynote announcements forthcoming. June 14-16, Columbus OH.
LINKS THAT DON’T SUCK
THE BIG PICTURE (THURSDAYS, 3 ET)
This Week’s Guest: Jim Parrott, Urban Institute
Hosted by Chrisman Media!
Jim Parrott is a regular recurring Big Picture guest, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute, and co-founder of Parrott Ryan Advisors, where he advises financial institutions navigating the primary and secondary mortgage markets.
Before that he spent several years in the Obama White House as a senior adviser at the National Economic Council, leading the team that counseled the cabinet and president on housing policy during the financial crisis and the early days of GSE reform.
He is one of the most credible independent voices in housing finance policy, with deep relationships on both sides of the aisle and a track record of calling the GSE conversation correctly long before it was fashionable to have one.
Join Rob Chrisman and I next Thursday - 3 PM ET!
Upcoming guests below. Holy lineup, Batman!
Apr 23 - Jim Parrott - Urban Institute
Apr 30 - Alberto Pina - CEO, PorchPass
May 7 - MBA CMB Leadership - Melanie Coulton, Deb Jones, Tammie Gravlee
May 14 - Kevin Peranio - Chief Lending Officer, PRMG
May 21 - Kate DeKay - CEO, Eustis Mortgage
May 28 - Varun Krishna - CEO, Rocket, Interim CEO at Redfin
June 4 - OPEN
June 11 - Glenn Strong - CEO, FirstTrust Home Loans
June 18 - Kathy Kraninger - Former CFPB Director, Current President & CEO of the Florida Bankers League
June 25 - Joe DeDominicis - CEO Stockton Mortgage
July 2 - Kim Nelson - CEO, BankSouth Mortgage
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
Apr 23-25 - NFL Draft (Pittsburgh, first time since 1948)
Apr 26-28 - Texas MBA Annual Conference
Apr 27-30 - HousingWire’s “The Gathering” Conference
Apr 28-29 - FOMC Meeting / Fed Rate Decision (Powell's second-to-last as Chair)
MAY 2026
May 2 - Kentucky Derby (152nd running, Churchill Downs)
May 5 - MISMO Spring Conference (Louisville)
May 7 - Jobs Report (April)
May 14-17 - PGA Championship (Aronimink Golf Club)
May 16 - Preakness Stakes (Laurel Park, Md.)
May 17-20 - MBA Secondary and Capital Markets Conference (Marriott Marquis, NYC)
May 25 - Memorial Day (markets closed)
May 31 - Indy 500 (Indianapolis Motor Speedway)
JUNE 2026
Jun 3 - Jobs Report (May)
Jun 5 - Belmont Stakes (Saratoga Race Course) -- Triple Crown on the line
Jun 11 - FIFA World Cup kicks off (USA, Canada, Mexico -- 48 teams)
Jun 14-16 - Ohio MBA Annual Conference (Columbus OH)
Jun 15 - Father's Day
Jun 16-17 - FOMC Meeting (rate decision, press conference)
Jun 18-21 - US Open Golf (Shinnecock Hills)
Jun 19 - Juneteenth (federal holiday, markets closed)
Jun 22 - NBA Draft (approx.)
Jun 29 - Wimbledon begins
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Because I couldn't go for three" ~ Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, when asked why he went for a 2-point conversion while leading Michigan by 34 points in 1968
THE OHIO MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION (OMBA)
The OMBA Podcast Network = underrated if you like mortgage content
Reg is OPEN for our 2026 Annual Conference!
THE MORTGAGE COLLABORATIVE
Want to learn more about the benefits of membership in TMC? Reach out to Heidi Belnay at [email protected]! Or me by replying to this email!
THE CARDBOARD JUNGLE
LOADED sports card break lineup for this coming Friday! Get your sports at thecardboardjungle.com!
We are one of eBay’s biggest and most highly rated sellers of sports card singles! Check out our eBay store here and pick up one of your favorite players rookie cards!
Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]