Edison Financial changes name to Rocket Mortgage

[Margaret's boy]

I don't know if this is a good time for Dan Gilbert to expand Rocket Mortgage north of the border. The Canadian real estate market is going into a meltdown with houses selling for 200K less than this time last year in Canada's biggest markets but it sounds like a win for Detroit and Michigan. Edison Financial to rebrand as Rocket Mortgage [[msn.com)

[K-slice]

This is just a name change, not an expansion. Unifying the brand north and south of the border.

But yeah, overall a good thing for the region!

[401don]

The online mortgage business really hasn't caught on in Canada, probably for a couple of reasons. Canada is more conservative in the financial industry than the U.S., being dominated by the big 5 Canadian banks and there really hasn't been a large company that I'm aware of offering the service, let alone promoting it. With all the spillover of U.S. media into Canada and Rocket's sports sponsorships Canadians will already be very familiar with the Rocket name and if marketed properly it should do well and expand quickly.

[Danny]

Dan Gilbert is taking that risk. But he can't be Gordon Gekko and Donald Trump all rolled up one.

[Margaret's boy]

The big 5 Canadian banks [TD-Canada Trust, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Scotiabank and RBC] have had a virtual monopoly on mortgage lending as long as anyone can remember. Dan Gilbert is finally giving the Big 5 some competition. Hope he succeeds. Too bad the real-estate market in Canada is tanking and higher interest rates and tighter lending rules from Ottawa, Canada's answer to the Washington "swamp", are making it harder for first-time homebuyers to enter the market.

[Gistok]

^ I would think that the major Canadian cities [[especially Toronto and Vancouver) are overpriced. But is Windsor affected by the tanking real estate market as much?