New Century Financial has filed chapter 11 and announced its laying off 3200 workers, or about 50% of its workforce.
Its based in Irvine, and I would expect a lot of laid off staff to be in Irvine too. I wonder how that will affect the housing market there? Since Irvine is home to a large majority of sub-prime lenders, how will the sector meltdown affect property prices? I have a cousin there, who I met over the weekend and we saw the movie “300” on IMAX (yes, it was awesome!) so I’ll be keeping an eye on the that market.
Also a quick look at New Century’s website shows that the Irvine branch is still hiring programmers, accountants, underwriters and loan officers, so I think it hasn’t been updated and probably won’t be be since their website guys probably got canned too!