GreenPoint Mortgage lays off 440

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Another day, another lender makes major reductions to staffing. Mortgage News Daily reports that GreenPoint Mortgage will lay off 440 employees.

As the problems with subprime mortgages continue to work through the system,
GreenPoint Mortgage, a subsidiary of Capital One
Financial has announced it is closing 12 of its operational centers and
some branch offices with the loss of approximately 440 positions, primarily
account executives, underwriters, and loan processors.

The affected offices are located throughout the country including locations
in California, Idaho, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and North Carolina and
primarily handle underwriting and processing of loans.

GreenPoint is another Alt-A lender in trouble; following the footsteps of companies like Opteum and Impac. The subprime contagion is alive and well.

Julie Rakes, a spokesperson for GreenPoint said that the decision to close the
offices was part of a consolidation of its operations which have been impacted
by the fallout from the subprime market and the resulting tightened lending
standards. GreenPoint is not a subprime lender, Ms. Rakes said, but its focus is
the near prime market, largely the sector called Alt
A mortgages. Tightened lending guidelines have reduced the volume of
loan originations (some reports have said that the company was a specialist in
low- and
no-document loans) and have caused liquidity issues.