Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Marin's GreenPoint Mortgage Closes Its Doors

Another one bites the dust:
Citing market volatility and tight liquidity, the parent company of GreenPoint Mortgage shut down the Novato-based lender Monday and announced plans to cut 1,900 jobs, including 430 in the Novato area.

GreenPoint itself had a round of layoffs in April, cutting nine employees in Novato and 61 elsewhere in the company.

The layoffs at Greenpoint mark the latest round of bad news for Marin's mortgage finance sector. In recent months layoffs were announced at several other finance houses, including Pro30 Funding in Novato, which laid off 40 employees, and Paul Financial LLC, which laid off 25 in San Rafael.

The Novato headquarters… is both a regional branch office and home to national support staff in human resources, information technology, training, accounting, marketing and legal services.

GreenPoint specializes in no-documentation and Alt-A mortgage loans for borrowers with slightly better credit than subprime borrowers.

3 comments:

marinite2 said...

According to the PressDemocrat (http://tinyurl.com/2hwzd4):

The layoffs impact 450 employees at the Novato headquarters, 94 workers in Santa Rosa, and another 60 in Larkspur.

So that's at least a total of 510 laid off Marin GreenPoint employees.

marinite2 said...

More on GreenPoint's product types from the PressDemocrat:

The loans GreenPoint specialized in include Alt-A mortgages to buyers who don’t fully document income and assets, Jumbo loans that exceed the $417,000 limit set by national lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, payment option loans and other alternative mortgages.

Lisa said...

Okay, as these local white collar jobs (mortgage brokers, title agents, appraisers, realtors) vanish into thin air...it begs the question, what % of these folks are local homeowners?? Will they end up having to join the ranks of people trying to sell their homes in Marin? Unless the house is over the $4MM market, good luck.