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St. Francis Capital Corp. is opening a wholesale mortgage business in Illinois that will buy home loans in a five-state region from mortgage brokers and then sell the loans to investors on the secondary market.
The new business, St. Francis Mortgage Corp., expects to process $240 million of mortgage loans in the first year and grow to about $300 million in transactions within three years, said James Eckel, executive vice president of the Brookfield bank holding company.
St. Francis chose Oak Brook Terrace for the new 20-person operation because Illinois has the second-highest mortgage origination rate in the country and Chicago is home to about 400 mortgage brokers.
The new office in suburban Chicago opened Feb. 1, but staff there had been working for weeks to sign up brokers who will...