Wells Fargo - Home Equity - Wholesale

Wells Fargo will discontinue Wholesale Home Equity lending effective today. Here are a few excerpts from their memo:

"We will discontinue:

non-Wells Fargo simultaneous second liens, i.e. piggybacks with any lender other than Wells Fargo will be prohibited;

1 standalone second liens where the existing first mortgage is not already with Wells Fargo, i.e. standalones with any lender other than Wells Fargo will be prohibited; and,

2 standalones in the first-lien position

- In addition to the Home Equity products still offered in our Wholesale channel, simultaneous close CCG Home Equity products and stand-alone Home Equity products will continue to be available through our retail lending channels and other home equity products will be available through Wells Fargo Financial. And, we will continue to offer prime first mortgage products throughout our lending channels.

1 Various Home Equity products will also continue to be available through our Retail lending channel and Wells Fargo Financial. And, we will continue to offer prime first mortgage products throughout our lending channels.

2 We will honor complete applications (i.e., 1003, Loan Submission Form, and credit bureau) submitted on or before end of business, Monday, Nov. 26, provided they fund by the earlier of the expiration of the credit approval or December 28, 2007."

Under a section entitled "Impacts to Team Members," the memo goes on to say "...we encourage impacted team members to apply for open positions."

Frankly, based upon the sloppy formatting and language of the email, we believe it was put together in a hurry. It certainly does not appear in the same format with images and a 'letterhead' look as previous Wells announcements. The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter earlier had placed the basic shut-down information in our News line-up mid-day on the 26th of November. We learned this news was not to be distributed for 24 to 48 hours. So perhaps 'yours truly' moved up the schedule.

To read the entire email, please click here.

It will be interesting to see how many open positions Wells Fargo has for this team. If you know how many are affected, or if they have any luck getting re-hired internally, let us know... please.