BANKING : Home Savings’ Purchase of Household Further Depletes Number of O.C. S

Household Bank’s departure from California will leave a big hole in the fast-shrinking group of Orange County savings and loans.

The Irvine thrift, which holds the charter for what once was a seven-state operation for giant Household International Corp., said this week that it will sell its 52 Southern California branches and $4.5 billion in deposits to Home Savings of America.

Household, the county’s second-largest thrift behind American Savings Bank in Irvine, is the latest thrift to announce plans recently to be acquired. Last year, United California Savings Bank in Anaheim was sold to CenFed Bank in Pasadena for $500,000 in cash and $6 million in stock, though the branches have kept the United California name.

By this summer, the county that once was home to 33 S&Ls--some; of them high-flying, unconventional institutions as well as some fraudulent ones--will have only eight left.

“Most of them disappeared because their traditional business of home mortgage lending has become more difficult to do, and the non-traditional business that many had turned to became their worst nightmare,” said Edward J. Carpenter, an Irvine banking and thrift consultant.

The county has become the state’s graveyard for S&L; failures. In the past 10 years, regulators have seized 28 county-based S&Ls;, some of which had moved here after others had failed.

In addition, two healthy thrifts, Sterling Savings in 1992 and Long Beach Bank in December, turned in their charters to get out from under the increasingly strict federal regulations that hamstrung their operations and cut into profits. They now are private mortgage companies.

Carpenter said borrowers too have found it easier to obtain loans from such non-regulated companies, which has helped to spur the industry’s consolidation.

3 Others to Be Bought: Besides Household Bank, three other Orange County savings and loans will be acquired soon.

Independence One Bank of California in Mission Viejo has sold one of its lines of business and is waiting to close two sales on the rest of its operations. The thrift’s holding company, Michigan National Corp. outside Detroit, is itself being acquired by an Australian bank.

The sale of Plaza Home Mortgage Bank in Santa Ana, whose mortgage banking business suffered with the seven Federal Reserve Board interest rate increases in the past year, should be completed next month to Fleet National Bank in Providence, R.I. The price so far is nearly $88 million but will likely be changed after the sale this month of certain assets.

And tiny Irvine City Bank in Irvine has an agreement pending to be sold to First Banks Inc. for $4.2 million. The St. Louis banking concern also plans to buy three community banks: Commercial Center Bank in Santa Ana, Huntington National Bank in Huntington Beach and Queen City Bank in Long Beach.

More S&L; Movement: Of the eight S&Ls; that will be left to call Orange County home this summer, one is courting buyers and another is barely operating.

American Savings Bank, which is owned privately by an investor group led by Texas financier Robert M. Bass, has been quietly shopped to major banks, including Citicorp in New York and NationsBank in Charlotte, N.C. Citicorp declined to pursue a deal, but NationsBank and at least one other banking company are interested, one industry source said.

The Bass group reportedly wants $2 billion for the nation’s fourth-largest thrift. The group also could conceivably sell out in a public offering if it fails to attract a buyer at its price.

Meantime, Standard Pacific Savings Bank in Newport Beach is doing little lending while it tries to figure out whether it wants to scuttle its mortgage banking focus--a business that has suffered with the run-up in interest rates--or whether it will wait awhile to see if the market turns around for mortgage banking.

Richard Ambrose, the S&L;’s chief financial officer and acting president, said the thrift expects to decide its course by the end of March. The S&L; is owned by Costa Mesa home builder Standard Pacific Corp.