Country Club Mortgage to lay off employees, including CEO, and shutter offices

Country Club Mortgage, a home lender based in California, has decided to lay off over 100 employees due to “facility closures,” documents sent to state regulators show. 

“This letter serves to give you an amended 60-day notice of permanent layoffs and facility closures effective Feb. 6, 2024,” Sherry Carson, human resources generalist at Country Club Mortgage, wrote in a letter sent to the Employment Development Department in California in early December. 

Representatives at the company did not immediately reply to a request for comments. 

Job cuts include the leadership – the president and CEO, the finance manager and the credit risk officer. Steve Rose is the lender’s president, per the company’s website. 

The layoffs target 105 staffers in Visalia (69 in total), Fresno (24), Hanford (3), Exeter (3) and Selma (6). The company’s LinkedIn page says the company has between 51 and 200 employees. It also says it processes, underwrites and funds loans in-house. 

Job positions affected by the layoffs are underwriters, processors, disclosure and document specialists, among others. More than 50 mortgage loan officers were let go. The National Multistate Licencing System shows the company had 16 sponsored MLOs in 14 active branches as of Jan. 19. 

It’s not clear if the company is shuttering or transitioning to a broker or correspondent business.

According to the mortgage recruiting platform Modex, the company originated about $350 million in 2023, down from about $511 million in 2022 and $825 million in 2021. Last year, half of the originated loans were conventional, followed by 35% of FHA loans and 14% of V.A. loans.

Like Country Club Mortgage, other mortgage lenders have imposed layoffs to their workforce as they face headwinds in 2023 and into 2024. 

Also in California, Pennymac Financial Services issued pink slips to more than 80 employees in November. The expected separation dates for the affected employees were either December or January. 

Sources told HousingWire that New York-based RealFi (formally known as Residential Home Funding Corp.) laid off employees in December and did not issue their last paychecks or provide a severance package.