MELVILLE, N.Y. — North Fork Bancorp agreed to sell the manufactured-housing finance business of its recently acquired GreenPoint Financial Corp. to a privately held financial-services company for an undisclosed amount.
In a press release Friday, North Fork said Green Tree Servicing LLC will acquire the $8.6 billion servicing portfolio of manufactured-housing loans and related assets of GreenPoint Credit LLC.
GreenPoint Financial has classified the manufactured-lending business as a discontinued operation, and its sale will result in a third-quarter discontinued operations charge of about $150 million.
North Fork, which completed its $6.3 billion acquisition of GreenPoint last week, said it expects to close the sale of GreenPoint Credit in the fourth quarter, subject to the receipt of necessary consents to transfer servicing to St. Paul, Minn.-based Green Tree.
GreenPoint Financial began exiting the manufactured-lending business in early 2002 amid mounting customer defaults and losses in a weak economy. The company entered the manufactured-financing market in 1998 with its purchase of Bank of America Corp.'s (BAC) business, and at one time GreenPoint Financial was the nation's No. 2 lender in that area.
New York Stock Exchange-listed shares of North Fork closed Thursday at $43.08, down 54 cents, or 1.2%.
