Ditech to Lay Off 80 in Georgia

Ditech Financial will lay off nearly 80 employees in Georgia as it closes an office in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

A spokeswoman for the Walter Investment Management Corp. subsidiary confirmed the layoffs were occurring but would not provide specifics. The date for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice provided online by the Georgia Department of Economic Development is Sept. 21.

The closure of the Kennesaw, Ga., facility follows planned office closures in Greensboro, N.C., and San Antonio, which will affect more than 100 employees.

A statement from the company cited decisions to consolidate servicing and technology functions at larger worksites are a reason for those previously announced closures. The company reiterated those statements with news of the Georgia layoffs.

Walter lost $232 million in the second quarter. It also announced it is selling an aggregate $72 billion in mortgage servicing rights to New Residential Investment Trust, although Ditech will be the subservicer for these loans.

As Ditech has refocused its operations in the wake of declining defaults it had made other changes. It announced in July that it would relaunch a wholesale lending channel. The company also previously announced that it would exit the distributed retail mortgage production channel.