By Amy Wyeth
Banker & Tradesman Reporter 

Commercial lender InterBay Funding has closed its Mansfield office, Banker & Tradesman has learned.

“I think they would like to say it’s not permanently closed, but like everyone else, they need to survive.  They need to reduce overhead,” Penny McCrudden, a receptionist at InterBay’s Ft. Washington, Penn., headquarters, said Wednesday.

Telephone calls to InterBay’s Mansfield office were forwarded to the Pennsylvania office Wednesday.

McCrudden said Mansfield was the company’s only New England office.  She said InterBay still lends in all 50 states, but does most lending remotely from Ft. Washington.

Sixty-five of 120 employees were laid off from the Mansfield office in April, but McCrudden said only 15 to 20 loan officers, processors and closers were left there earlier this week.

InterBay Funding is one of three loan origination divisions of Bayview Lending Group, the commercial arm of Coral Gables, Fla.-based Bayview Financial.

Silver Hill Financial is another division that once had a Massachusetts presence, but its office here closed in April.

Bayview’s third division, Commercial Direct, does not have a Massachusetts office.

Silver Hill Financial and InterBay specialize in small-balance commercial loans, which range in size from $100,000 to $1.5 million.

Officials at Bayview Financial were not immediately available.

Boston commercial broker George Fantini, principal at Fantini & Gorga, said InterBay’s closure is symbolic of the fact that “commercial lenders of all types are struggling to find the best way to compete going forward” in a market where securitized loans of any type are suspect.

However, he said, InterBay was a small player here.

“They’re really not a factor of consequence on the lending business in Massachusetts,” he said.