BofA Leaves. Flipping Returns.

Bank of America isn’t leaving New Mexico, just a bunch of rural counties. On Friday BofA announced the sale of 11 banking offices (as branches are called these days) to Washington Federal of Seattle. I assume the sale is just another part of BofA’s massive cost cutting in search of profit. The effort was successful during the second quarter when BofA made $4 billion. Now if the feds would just let BofA raise the dividends.
While I haven’t quite pinned the details, my first pass on checking locations says that the move takes BofA completely out of five counties. This is just a final testimony to the notion that BofA never cared much about New Mexico in the first place and cared even less about places outside the Rio Grande.
BofA is leaving three counties where Sunwest Bank, then a subsidiary of Boatmen’s Bancshares of St. Louis, was the biggest bank in town in 1995. They are Chaves (Roswell), Curry (Clovis), and Grant (Silver City). (The history is that Albuquerque-based Sunwest became part of Boatmen’s, which became part of NationsBank which merged with Bank America and took the BofA name.)
BofA also sold two branches in Colfax County, one in Angel Fire and one in Raton; a branch in Hobbs; both branches in Rio Arriba, one in Espanola and one in Chama; and the one in Socorro.
The flipping refers to houses. My radio station in Albuquerque is running commercials urging people to attend a seminar to learn about putting money into the purchase, quickie renovation and resale of homes. Such speculation was a significant contributing factor in creating the “great recession.” And, no, we will never learn.