Ruoff Mortgage — first the Dave Ruoff Mortgage Company

1984 – present

Founded: 1984, in Fort Wayne, as the Dave Ruoff Mortgage Company, by David Ruoff, who had worked in the mortgage business since 1959. The company opened with eighteen employees. Its founder is profiled in the Founders & Chief Executives record; this entry carries the company.

What it did: Full-service residential mortgage lending — origination and servicing of home loans through retail branches and, later, a national online consumer-direct division.

Course: The company stayed family-owned and Fort Wayne-based while it grew branch by branch through Indiana and into Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Florida. For a time it traded as Ruoff Home Mortgage — the name on its 2017 and 2018 releases — and by 2020 it had shortened the name to Ruoff Mortgage. David Ruoff's son-in-law Mark Music joined the company in 2007 and became its president; when Ruoff retired in 2012, Music succeeded him as president, owner and chief executive. The growth under Music was measured in trade record: eight consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies from 2012 through 2019, a run the company later extended to ten straight years; revenue of $90.4 million in 2017 and $142 million in 2019, on $2.765 billion of loans. In September 2017 the company's name went onto Indiana's largest outdoor amphitheater — the former Klipsch Music Center at Noblesville became the Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center, shortened in December 2019 to Ruoff Music Center; the venue is in Noblesville, and it is carried here as the company's record, not Fort Wayne's. In 2020, the refinance year, the company reported $356 million of revenue on $5.6 billion of loan volume, with 910 employees, counting its affiliates — Centurion Land Title, Accucomp Appraisal Services, Sarma Aviation and Ruoff Insurance. The headquarters remained in Fort Wayne, at 1700 Magnavox Way; the company spoke in 2020 of an added presence at the Electric Works campus while weighing its headquarters space.

Present state: Privately held and still headquartered in Fort Wayne under Mark Music, with more than sixty retail locations and an online division originating in thirty-one states (company record, 2025). Music is also majority owner of Fort Wayne Football Club.

Sources:

1. Founders & CEOs — "David Ruoff — 'I dug the first ditch'" (the 1984 founding with eighteen employees, the 2007 Music presidency, the 2012 succession, the founder's death 13 June 2019).
2. Input Fort Wayne, "This family-owned Fort Wayne business is booming in 2020," 2 December 2020 — the 67 branches, the six-time Inc. 5000 standing to that date, 900-plus employees, the 2019 and 2020 revenue and volume figures as then projected, the Electric Works plan.
3. Ruoff Mortgage company releases — 15 August 2018 (the sixth straight Inc. 5000 year; 2017 revenue $90.4 million; nearly 50 branches) and the 2020 results release (revenue $356.2 million, loan volume $5.6 billion, 910 employees, eight straight Inc. 5000 years, affiliates Centurion Land Title, Accucomp Appraisal Services, Sarma Aviation and Ruoff Insurance).
4. Ruoff Home Mortgage release, 27 September 2017 — the Noblesville naming-rights agreement with Live Nation; Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Ruoff Music Center" — the December 2019 shortening of the name.
5. Ruoff Mortgage release, 23 July 2025 — the ten consecutive Inc. 5000 years, 60-plus retail locations, origination in 31 states, Music's Fort Wayne Football Club ownership.