{"id":181219,"date":"2025-07-16T18:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T18:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/181219\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T18:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T18:57:09","slug":"homebuilder-mortgage-ceos-set-to-buy-tampa-bay-rays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/181219\/","title":{"rendered":"Homebuilder, mortgage CEOs set to buy Tampa Bay Rays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zalupski, whose company is based in Jacksonville, Florida, plans to keep the team in the Tampa Bay area, with a preference for Tampa over St. Petersburg, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6493774\/2025\/07\/14\/tampa-bay-rays-sale-zalupski-mlb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the source said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sportico <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportico.com\/business\/team-sales\/2025\/tampa-bay-rays-sale-new-owner-patrick-zalupski-deal-1234856945\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> in June that the group had entered advanced talks and signed a letter of intent. The Rays said in a statement last month that they were in exclusive negotiations with Zalupski\u2019s group, which includes Bill Cosgrove and Ken Babby.<\/p>\n<p>Cosgrove is the owner and CEO of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/company\/union-home-mortgage\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Union Home Mortgage<\/a> (UHM) and Babby owns two minor-league teams.<\/p>\n<p>Dream Finders Homes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/articles\/dream-finders-homes-to-acquire-alliant-national-title\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acquired<\/a> Alliant National Title Insurance Co. at the tail end of 2024. And in March 2025, its mortgage arm, Jet HomeLoans, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/articles\/jet-homeloans-acquires-cherry-creeks-securitization-servicing-operations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acquired<\/a> Cherry Creek Mortgage LLC.<\/p>\n<p>Jet HomeLoans, founded in 2017 as a joint venture with Dream Finders, did roughly $2.3 billion in mortgage origination volume in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Cosgrove\u2019s Union Home Mortgage, an independent mortgage bank based in Strongsville, Ohio, produced $5.3 billion in volume across its 200-plus branches in 2024, according to Modex data.<\/p>\n<p>UHM most recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/articles\/union-home-mortgage-expands-footprint-in-ohio-adds-15-new-personnel\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">extended its footprint<\/a> into the Cincinnati market, appointing Ravi Patel and Justin Allen as area branch managers. In early 2025, the company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/articles\/union-home-mortgage-acquires-nrl-mortgage\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acquired<\/a> Houston-based Nations Reliable Lending, aka NRL Mortgage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zalupski, whose company is based in Jacksonville, Florida, plans to keep the team in the Tampa Bay area,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,33500,182,33501,33502,33503,4,297,295,2550,68,2551,2549,33504],"class_list":{"0":"post-181219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cherry-creek-mortgage","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-homebuilders","12":"tag-hwmember","13":"tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-rays","16":"tag-tampa","17":"tag-tampa-bay","18":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","19":"tag-tampabay","20":"tag-tampabayrays","21":"tag-union-home-mortgage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114864445557680401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}