ABN Amro Mortgage Group Inc. announced Thursday that it has bought the domain names Mortgage.com and Hipoteca.com to jump-start its Internet effort and increase its market share in the United States.
The mortgage subsidiary of ABN Amro of Amsterdam picked up the Web addresses in an auction sponsored by Mortgage.com Inc., which began shutting down its operations on Oct. 31. ABN Amro is paying $1.8 million for the deal. 
The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based lender has had little Internet presence and has not originated loans online. Last year it was ranked No. 8 in originations, with $28.3 billion.
Officials of ABN Amro said they hope the Mortgage.com name will attract borrowers that its own name could not.
"ABN Amro is not exactly a branded name in the United States," said Stanley H. Rhodes, president of ABN Amro Mortgage Group. "Rather than have a site that says 'abnamromortgage.com,' I think it's much easier for us to promote 'Mortgage.com by ABN Amro.' "
Mr. Rhodes said that Mortgage.com had branded the site very well in the past two years, something his company can now take advantage of. ABN Amro is devising a marketing strategy and will launch its retail Web sites in the next 90 to 120 days, he said.
"We found the names to be valuable," he said. "Mortgage.com is the generic name that one would enter in going to a mortgage Web site. There has been some negative associated with it recently, but we don't think that outweighs the positive aspects of the name."
Hipoteca.com - Spanish for "mortgage" - has gotten less branding effort than its counterpart but has the potential to draw Spanish-speaking borrowers living in the United States, Mr. Rhodes said. Though ABN Amro could eventually extend both domain names to other countries, Internet use for the time being "begins to diminish as you get outside the U.S. borders," he added.
After the ABN Amro deal, Mortgage.com Inc. may be left with little but unpaid bills. In its nearly two years in business it lost more than $100 million, changed its business focus from direct consumer lending to business-to-business mortgage technology, and was sued over the original deal it made to buy its domain name.
Mortgage.com lost almost $24 million in the third quarter alone, pushing losses for the first nine months to $47 million.
According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Mortgage Systems International, a subsidiary of Banco Hipotecario SA, acquired the rights to Mortgage.com's technology and proprietary software on Nov. 16. Mortgage.com is to get $1.5 million in cash, 25% of the equity of Mortgage Systems, and a two-year option to acquire 5% more equity for $1.5 million.
The fate of Mortgage.com has raised the question of whether stand-alone Internet mortgage lenders can succeed - at least in the short term. Supported by its profitable branch structure, ABN Amro can originate loans through Mortgage.com until online lending catches on with consumers. But companies like Mortgage.com -including iOwn.com, FiNet, and E-Loan - do not have the luxury of waiting for consumer adoption.
Mr. Rhodes said that ABN Amro has not subscribed to the dot-com business model, in which a company goes into the mortgage business solely through the Internet. Rather, ABN Amro plans to use the domain names to augment its existing origination channels and business.
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