Countrywide Funding Ups Work Force, May Expand Site

Countrywide Funding Corp., the nation’s largest residential mortgage lender, has doubled its payroll in Simi Valley in the year since it took over a sprawling building once occupied by Gibraltar Savings.

And further expansion may be in the works at the 44-acre site on Madera Road.

Despite the sluggish housing market, Countrywide, a subsidiary of Pasadena-based Countrywide Credit Industries Inc., has established itself in a short time as one of Ventura County’s leading employers.

In September, more than 400 Countrywide employees were transferred to the Ventura County location from Pasadena to handle all of the company’s loan servicing and most of its data-processing work.

Since then, the Simi Valley operation has grown to 950 employees, said Patrick Benton, the facility’s cost-control manager.

The expansion was due mainly to widespread mortgage refinancing and an increase in Countrywide’s share of the mortgage market, Benton said.

Re-fis, in which owners pay off old loans and assume new ones usually at lower interest rates, account for 70% of Countrywide’s business, Benton reported. “In recent months, we’ve also been helped somewhat by increased demand for new mortgages for home purchases,” he said.

At the end of June, Countrywide Funding’s loan portfolio totaled $66 billion, an industry record, Benton said. “We’re now originating more than $4 billion in mortgage loans every month.”

The loan-servicing unit, which collects payments for other lenders, has also become the largest in its field, Benton added.

Countrywide is having architectural studies made for the possible construction of an additional building on the former Gibraltar site, Benton noted. “Nothing is definite yet, but it’s possible that our loan origination division will also be relocated to Simi Valley,” he said.

Countrywide purchased the two-story, 300,000-square-foot building from the Resolution Trust Corp. for $16 million. The structure, formerly used by Gibraltar’s loan servicing and data-processing departments, was especially attractive to Countrywide because it was pre-wired for computers.