Countrywide Drops Plans to Construct Building in Simi

Countrywide Funding Corp., the giant mortgage banker that has suffered along with the rest of its industry lately, has abandoned plans to construct a new building alongside its loan servicing and data-processing center in Simi Valley.

That’s the bad news.

The good news, reports spokeswoman Laura Lippman, is that the 1,100 people working in the Ventura County facility appear to be safe from the layoffs that have hit the rest of the mortgage company. “Our loan-servicing business is growing,” she says. “We’re at that building’s capacity.”

Overall, about 1,400 Countrywide workers nationwide have been let go, including many at the corporate headquarters in Pasadena. But now Countrywide has more workers in Simi Valley than in Pasadena, according to Lippman.

“Most of the layoffs have been in loan-origination, not in servicing,” she said. Many of the employees in Simi work on processing payments on mortgages that have been sold in the secondary market. Countrywide services $100 billion in such loans, earning fees for the work, Lippman reported.

Shortly after the company purchased the former Gibraltar Savings structure in 1992, a Countrywide official said architectural studies were being made for the possible construction of another large building on the site.

Instead, any work overflow in Simi will now be handled at a Countrywide facility in Plano, Tex. Lippman said she didn’t know why the Simi expansion plans were dropped, although “the friendly business climate in Texas could be a factor.”