DES MOINES - Wells Fargo Home Mortgage said it bought the servicing rights on $7.5 billion of home loans from Fleet Mortgage Group of Columbia, S.C.
Terms were not disclosed. The Wells Fargo & Co. unit will take over servicing of 69,000 loans, 42,000 of which are secured by homes in California.
The rest of the mortgages are on homes in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington state.
The servicing rights are part of a $25 billion package that the FleetBoston Financial Corp. subsidiary put on the block in April. The offering was split into four geographic segments; the only other known bidder is PNC Mortgage of Vernon Hills, Ill., which bought the $5 billion Eastern region piece.
The Wells unit is in a buying mode; last week it said it had signed a letter of intent to buy the $52 billion servicing portfolio of First Union Corp. as well as the Charlotte, N.C., banking company's Raleigh servicing center.
That deal, combined with the purchase from Fleet, would boost Wells' portfolio to $345.5 billion, making it the largest servicer in the industry.
At the end of the first quarter Wells ranked No. 3, behind Chase Manhattan and Bank of America, according to National Mortgage News.
