Plaza Home Mortgage Posts a Bigger Loss : Finances: Earnings revision is attributed to income from asset sales that could not be included for the third quarter.

Plaza Home Mortgage Corp. said Tuesday that its $10.2-million third-quarter loss, which was much higher than anticipated, has grown 14% more because the company cannot record income from some asset sales until the current quarter.

Plaza, the holding company for Plaza Home Mortgage Bank in Santa Ana, restated its third-quarter results to show a loss of $11.6 million, or 99 cents a share. The higher loss also increased its red ink for nine months to $21.5 million, or $1.83 a share.

Plaza had tried to add to its third-quarter results the gains from the sale of $155 million in mortgage servicing rights, which are the rights to bill borrowers and collect payments from them for a fee.

But the company and its independent auditors decided that the criteria needed to record the sale had not been met during the third quarter. The criteria, though, have since been met, and the income will be reported as part of Plaza’s fourth-quarter results.

It was unclear what effect, if any, the higher loss will have on the pending $120-million sale of the thrift holding company to Fleet National Bank, a subsidiary of Fleet Financial Group Inc. in Providence, R.I.

The acquisition of Plaza, the nation’s 13th-largest mortgage lender and a major lender in poor and minority areas, would make Fleet the nation’s fourth-largest mortgage provider.

Plaza revealed two weeks ago that its third-quarter loss was much higher than the expected shortfall of $5.8 million to $6.5 million, and the loss significantly weakened the financial condition of its savings and loan subsidiary.

At the time, Plaza’s stock price was knocked down 25 cents a share. But Tuesday’s restated income barely affected the price, which gained 6 1/4 cents to close at $7.5625 a share in Nasdaq trading.