I met one of the upper management staff for Ameriquest’s corporate office a couple weeks ago. Nice guy, I hope he makes it. He was recently hired to clean up some of their mess. The closing of the branch offices is consistent with what he was recommending they do to stave off their regulatory problems with some of the states. Ameriquest was reportedly about 1″ away from getting kicked out of a couple states anyway. I think this move has more to do with reining in their branches, many of which have been out of control for a while now, than it does with declining volumes.
On the other hand, I personally know of a couple mortgage brokerages in town that are already in some real pain because of declining volumes here. I also know of a couple of the realty agents here in town who have hit a wall – no sales since the beginning of the year. I’ll wager the Hummer dealers will have a glut of used H2s pretty quick.
