The biggest thrifts are curbing their sales.

The public's strong appetite for fixed-rate mortgages has been bad news for the thrifts that hold loans for investment.

Most large thrifts are portfolio lenders that do not want to hold fixed-rate loans because of interest-rate risk, but also do not want to abandon the home lending market to mortgage banks.

As a result, many have been originating fixed loans defensively and selling substantial amounts into the secondary market. But almost all of these pure thrifts have trimmed their sales of mortgages since last year's first half, perhaps because of a modest pickup in demand for adjustable-rate loans.

The Opposite Tack

A substantial number of institutions, however, are mortgage banks in thrift clothing. These thrifts, mostly midsize, have embraced mortgage banking enthusiastically, selling loans in amounts far exceeding their assets. And the originations boom has given them much more product to sell.

At Bank United of Texas, George Bender, head of mortgage banking, said: "We're No. 1 [in thrift sales volume] this year, as we were last year, because we have a mortgage banking division that sells a majority of its loans to others."

Second-place Plaza Home Mortgage is also primarily a mortgage bank, as is No. 4 First Security of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. No. 3 Homefed of San Diego is in the hands of the Resolution Trust Corp.

The biggest pure thrift on the list is No. 5 Home Savings of America, Irwindale, Calif. The unit of H.F. Ahmanson & Co. is the nation's largest thrift. Its first-half sales of home loans dropped by about $1 billion from the year-earlier level.

No. 7 Great Western Bank of Chatsworth, Calif., the second-largest thrift, reduced its sales by some $950 million.

Other big reductions: $450 million by Guaranty Federal Bank, Dallas; $440 million by Citibank Federal Savings, San Francisco; and $300 million by Household Bank, Newport Beach, Calif. [TABULAR DATA OMITTED]

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