Plaza Merger Price Dips for a Second Time : Acquisitions: Santa Ana-based home mortgage company sees share price drop 5 cents after selling off some assets.

Plaza Home Mortgage Corp., whose mortgage banking business was battered by last year’s rising interest rates, said Thursday that it has reduced for the second time its sale price in a pending merger.

The holding company of Plaza Home Mortgage Bank in Santa Ana said the sale of certain assets, primarily loans, will knock off about 5 cents a share, or about $500,000, from the purchase price to be paid by a Fleet Financial Group Inc. subsidiary.

The Providence, R.I., company’s Fleet National Bank now will pay about $87.9 million for Plaza in an acquisition that will make Fleet the nation’s fourth-largest mortgage provider. Plaza had grown from scratch 10 years ago to become the nation’s 22nd-largest mortgage provider, with more than $900 million in assets.

In a telephone conference Thursday morning, Fleet told Wall Street analysts that it expects to complete its acquisition by the end of March. Thomas K. Brown, an analyst with the brokerage Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York, said the minor price change is the kind of adjustment that often occurs shortly before such deals are closed.

Fleet originally agreed to pay $10.125 a share, or about $120 million, when the deal was announced in September. But Plaza’s larger-than-expected third-quarter loss of $11.6 million prompted the parties two weeks ago to lower the sale price to $7.625 a share, or about $88.5 million.

The latest price change didn’t hurt Plaza’s stock. It closed at $7.19 a share in Nasdaq trading Thursday, up 56 cents a share.