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Monday, July 07, 2008

Indymac: Halt Retail and Wholesale Lending, Major Layoffs

by Calculated Risk on 7/07/2008 04:20:00 PM

From Indymac: Indymac Issues Stakeholder Letter. (hat tip John, others! thanks) Excerpts:

As a result of the above, we have made the difficult decision, effective July 7, 2008, that we will no longer accept any new loan submissions or rate locks in our retail and wholesale forward mortgage lending channels, except for our servicing retention channel.
...
Unfortunately, the above actions will necessitate the reduction in our present workforce from approximately 7,200 to roughly 3,400 or so over the next couple of months, which should reduce our operating expenses by roughly 60%.
Added: A few more excerpts from Indymac:

Large losses coming:
Given the continued downward trend in home prices and a resulting increase in our forecasted credit losses and the related downward trend in the pricing of all mortgage related assets in the capital markets, especially mortgage-backed securities where we have experienced significant rating agency downgrades this quarter, we expect our loss for the second quarter to be larger than Q108, but it is difficult at this time to be more precise given the significant uncertainty surrounding accounting estimates, fair value accounting and other accounting matters.
On the value of Indymac assets:
[I]n this environment, where either there are no bids for most of IMB’s mortgage loans and securities or the bid/ask spreads are abnormally wide, “fire-selling” assets would actually deplete capital further.
The entire press release is grim.