American Home Mortgage, which shut down most of its operations on Friday, has 108 loans currently being processed in Washington state, said Deb Bortner, director of consumer services for the state’s Department of Financial Institutions.

More than half of those loans are for people buying homes, Bortner said. The remaining loans are for refinancing. Bortner said those loans will be shopped around to other lenders, similar to what happened when New Century Financial ceased business operations in the state. That lender had about 500 mortgages in the pipeline statewide when it closed shop.

“People were actually able to get better loans,” Bortner said. “We’ll watch the pipeline and we’ll see how it goes. We want them (American Home) to find other loan opportunities for people.”

American Home has 21 offices in Washington, including one in Spokane, at 316 W. Boone Ave. The Spokane office was still open Friday afternoon, despite national reports that more than 6,000 employees were laid off.

Lynn Hergenreder, manager of the office, said there are 17 or 18 local employees but couldn’t offer details about what might happen to those jobs.

During the past eight months, the mortgage lender’s Spokane office has hired 12 loan officers, according to records in The Spokesman-Review, which runs profiles submitted on new employees in a column called Business Beat. That column is not reflective of turnover that might occur at a company, however.

The company plans to issue a news release Monday.