Wells Fargo Agrees to Sell Its Home-Mortgage Unit

Wells Fargo & Co. said it has reached agreement to sell its residential mortgage subsidiary to a limited partnership organized by Integrated Resources Inc., a New York real estate and investment firm.

The deal, which was announced Sunday, will bring Wells Fargo, the holding company for Wells Fargo Bank, about $108 million. The sale is expected to be completed by March 31, if regulatory authorities approve it.

Wells Fargo said it expects a first-quarter pretax gain of about $50 million on the deal. It said a further $40-million gain will be amortized over 12 years.

The San Francisco-based company said last September that it would like to spin off the mortgage subsidiary as part of a long-term strategy to concentrate on traditional banking lines. At the time, the bank holding company had no serious candidates for the sale.

Wells Fargo Mortgage is “strictly a servicing company” handling some of the bank’s residential mortgages, a company spokeswoman said. She said the sale would not affect persons whose home mortgages are held by the bank.

The subsidiary, based in Santa Rosa, has assets of $125 million and services more than $6 billion in residential mortgages. It has 500 employees in California and Hawaii, most of whom will be retained by the new owners, Wells Fargo said.

The bank holding company said some of its subsidiaries will continue to write commercial mortgages, and Wells Fargo Mortgage may in the future engage in the commercial mortgage banking business. The new owners will keep the name Wells Fargo Mortgage for an unspecified period before changing it, the company said.

Integrated Resources organizes and manages investment programs in real estate, leveraged buy-outs, energy, equipment leasing and other areas. It has a capital base of about $600 million.