Business - Folsom home lender closes - sacbee.com
Here's a story by Jim Wasseman, who used to be an Associated Press writer. He is very knowledgable about the housing industry and has done some excellent pieces on HOAs. Now he's bylined as a staff writer for the Sacramento Bee. Thanks to Nancy Levy for pointing this out. The story is about rising mortgage defaults that are bad enough to cause a bank to fail. Is this only the start? And if they don't pay the mortgage, they aren't paying the HOA assessments. Note also that this isn't just any bank. Look who is the CEO:

Growing consumer defaults have claimed the first home loan lender in the Sacramento area with the closing of Folsom-based Central Pacific Mortgage. The firm shut its doors last week and dismissed an unknown number of employees, the state Department of Corporations confirmed. "We know that it's closed and the next step in the process may be that they voluntarily surrender their license," DOC spokesman Andrew Roth said. The firm's demise comes amid growing trouble for the nation's mortgage lenders as rising numbers of borrowers default on their home loans. It also involves an influential local personality on the nation's mortgage lending scene and a 2004 appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Courson, Central Pacific's 17-year president and chief executive officer, chaired the national trade group for mortgage bankers, the Mortgage Bankers Association, in 2002 and 2003. Currently, he is chairman of the board of the California Housing Finance Agency, the state's affordable housing bank.