Great Western Financial Sells Its Last Housing Resale Agency

Great Western Financial Corp. is officially out of the residential real estate sales business.

The Beverly Hills-based company’s foray into the business ended this week when escrow closed on the last of the financial service company’s residential resale agencies.

The sale of the Great Western Real Estate offices in Palm Springs and Palm Desert closed out a seven-year effort by the financial giant to make a name for itself in all arenas of the real estate market.

The company is a major residential mortgage lender through Great Western Bank, the nation’s second-largest savings and loan. It also operated a new-home sales unit, with about 200 full- and part-time employees, but shut it down in October.

Great Western said in December that it would shed its residential resale operation by Jan. 31.

The passing of the Great Western Real Estate subsidiary threw an estimated 1,300 real estate agents and support workers into the job market in the middle of a major national real estate industry depression. About 200 of the employees and contract agents worked in Orange County.

A spokesman for the parent company said Thursday that many of the agents have been taken on by other real estate firms. But the industry as a whole is suffering as sales have slowed in the economic slump, putting many workers in real estate-related jobs out of work.

Of the 25 Great Western Real Estate offices in the state, six were sold--five to former employees--and 19 were closed down.

In Orange County, the Orange, Placentia and Los Alamitos offices were closed. The Anaheim office was purchased by two former Great Western Real Estate managers who also acquired the company’s Upland and Corona offices. The three operate as the Western Group.