Columbia Home Loans, LLC - Mortgage Lending Subisidary of OceanFirst Bank

The story above announces the closure of this NY-based lending subsidiary of OceanFirst:

OceanFirst Financial Corp. said it decided to close down its mortgage banking subsidiary as the unit incurred significant operating losses in the last two quarters from subprime mortgage loan originations.

The bank holding company estimates $900,000 in employee severance and lease cancellation charges related to the closure of the unit, Columbia Home Loans LLC, it said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"The discontinuation of Columbia's operation is expected to be completed within six months," the filing said.

On April 25, OceanFirst had said it was in talks with an interested party on the sale of Columbia Homes and that it would shut down the unit if the talks failed.

We now know how that turned out.

Based on the company's web site, they had Conventional, FHA, ARM, Non-Conf. Jumbo, First-time and Home Equity line programs. However, we are unsure of the loan mix in practice. They claim to have financed over $1.5 billion for the five years ended whenever the web site's "about" page was last updated—a modest volume, but somewhat probably out of date.