A mortgage business owned by an East Coast bank is abandoning third-party originations, while a West Coast bank was seized by state regulators. So far this year, 65 mortgage-related casualties have been tracked.
First Heritage Bank was closed Friday by the Washington Department of Financial Institutions. The state blamed “inadequate capital and severe loan losses” for its decision to shutter the bank.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the Snohomish, Wash.-based institution.
First Heritage was founded in 1982 and had 57 employees as of March 31. The bank faced an FDIC prompt corrective action in February.
Its home-loan holdings were $34 million, while commercial real estate assets were $63 million and construction-and-land-development loans totaled $21 million.
Columbia State Bank assumed First Heritage’s $163 million in deposits for an 0.75 percent premium. It also acquired all of the failed bank’s $174 million in assets with the FDIC agreeing to a loss-sharing arrangement on $142 million of the assets.
After all is said-and-done, the FDIC expects its Deposit Insurance Fund to take a $35 million hit as a result of First Heritage’s failure — the 44th FDIC-insured bank to fail during 2011.
Sidus Financial LLC said Tuesday that it was halting new lock requests from mortgage brokers and correspondent customers, according to a notice on its Web site.
“Challenges of the ever changing and evolving mortgage lending market” were cited as the reason for its decision to abandon third-party lending.
Sidus said it would complete the origination of loans in process, but no new lock requests would be accepted after Wednesday. June 3 is the last day to submit the corresponding loan applications, while all loans need to be funded by July 1.
The retail operation will continue to originate new business, according to the announcement.
Sidus was acquired by Elkin, N.C.-based Yadkin Valley Bank and Trust Co. in 2004. The company, which was formed by an investment group that included several North Carolina community banks, operated five retail mortgage origination offices under the name First Mortgage Corp. in addition to Sidus Wholesale when it was acquired.
Greenville, N.C.-based Sidus was the ninth non-bank closing this year. Including banks and credit unions, the failure or closing of 65 mortgage-related operations have been tracked by MortgageDaily.com during 2011.
