Cincinnati PR

Anybody seen Coldstream?

Three young guns who met at Ohio Financial, then started their own company, struck when the mortgage brokerage industry was at its hottest, in 2005, and scored a centerpiece spread in The Cincinnati Enquirer five years ago today.

Coldstream Financial – website is a site unseen – also made the Fast 55 lists published in 2005 and 2006 by The Cincinnati Business Courier, until flaming out – allegedley – in 2008.

The company was run by Principals Jeff Herr, Nolan Marx and J. Scott Thompson, three young and motivated mortgage loan experts who built their business through an intense mix of recruiting, training and exclusive, industry-targeted marketing partnerships.

In just three years, from 2002 to 2005, Coldstream had set a pace to originate $246 million in mortgage volume, a 500 percent increase, on properties located specifically in Greater Cincinnati.

Coldstream targeted the first-home buyer in the $120,000-$150,000 range and had become the choice for thousands of local homeowners. The company recruited heavily on local college campuses, particularly at Miami University in Oxford.

“Our stated goal is to be the largest mortgage provider in Greater Cincinnati, which we believe we’ll be able to accomplish within a few years,” Herr said at the time.

“We realize the process of financial review for a mortgage can be a very stressful situation, so one of the ways that we’ve been able to create residual business is by making it a very positive experience,”  Thompson said in the 2005 press release (below). “Our people know what they’re talking about. They live and breathe this stuff.”

Various reports had Coldstream shutting its doors in 2008. Here’s a story from October 2008 in The Cincinnati Business Courier:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2008/10/06/story19.html

Coldstream Financial still pops up in Google searches as operating an office in Mount Adams; inquiries as to the connection to the Coldstream Financial once located in Springdale were inconclusive.

Here’s the Coldstream Financial press release that paved the way for the 2005 profile in The Enquirer: