Washington Mutual is eliminating 215 jobs at its Irvine home loan center as part of a big restructuring of its home loan business that was announced on Monday.
Spokesman Gary Kishner said the cuts include 194 lending jobs and 21 support positions in Irvine. The layoffs are being phased in through the end of January. The Irvine home loan center itself survived the cuts and will remain open, although Kishner didn’t know how many workers would remain there.
A few smaller O.C. home loan offices will be closed, including Santa Ana, South Coast Metro, Laguna Niguel and Corona del Mar, resulting in another handful of job cuts, Kishner said.
Washington Mutual is keeping another 13 home loan and satellite offices in Orange County, Kishner said.
Loan business is very vulnerable. This is why I will tell all my children not to enter in this industry.
Wamu is certainly NOT a lender who mostly dealt sub-prime - SO this is a clear indicator that PRIME lenders are being affected… also indicating that it is still affecting many people’s income.
I agree franko, WAMU is a legitimate company and never did questionable loans. I did my loans thru WAMU and they were on the up and up, never tried to “work” the figures in my favor or any other funny business. Too bad……..Unfortunately we are all going to be impacted by this get rich quick scam and then if that isn’t bad enough we have the White House bailing those idiots out. Those homeowners knew they couldn’t afford the home they purchased in the first place. Just remember gravitation; what goes up much eventually knock you on the head!
Welcome to 2007 franko!
WAMU is the only lender that I will ever do business with. I recently opend up two $300K equity lines with. .. and I did not pay 1 cent. …. In my opinion the nice guys finsh last.
Are you kidding me? WAMU is a bunch of thieves. They will lock you in when rates fall and find an excuse like, “Sorry, we lost your file” when rates rise. They tried the old bait and switch with me when rates rose a few years ago. My guess is WAMU is up to their eyeballs in bad loans, they will need the US Gov’t before this is over. Nice guys, what a joke. Try future inmates.
WAMU was doing a ton of shady loans. They are now being investigated along with First American about inflating appraisals to get deals done. On the retail side, many officers were not even licensed agents (they do not have to be in CA). Imagine that? Someone making a decision and advising you about your most important real estate purchase, yet, they do not have a mortgage, house, or license of their own. Good riddance! Peanuts is being fooled about the no cost thing. Sure no cost, but WAMU is borrowing money at 5% and lending it to Peanuts for 8%. Not a very good deal seeing Peanuts has over $600K in equity lines. Again, thieves to the very end.
215 jobs? TRY 3,000-3,200 JOBS. I was laid off from washington mutual this last monday. they are asking us to work until jan. 31/08. As expected it has pretty lax around the call center seeing that everyone including the managers have just been fired by wamu, but are being asked to continue to make money for the company. We were just called into a meeting and were told that if upper management found out that we weren’t taking calls or working on our pipeline that they would fire us immediate and make us leave without severance. It was already established that if we leave prior to our end work date which mine is jan. 15th, that we would not receive any severance regardless how long you had been with the company. Washington mutual says it’s core company values are CARING, FAIR, HUMAN, DYNAMIC, AND DRIVEN. I can’t say I’ve seen that from upper managment! All I know is what goes around comes around, and I’ve seen other major lenders treat they’re employees this way and they are no longer in business.