Two of the nation’s biggest home-loan companies are preparing their investors for the worst, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Countrywide Financial Corp. and Washington Mutual Inc. warned Thursday that turbulent mortgage market conditions were likely to hurt operations in the near term. The news, which came at the close of Wall Street’s worst trading day since February, sent shares of both companies lower in after-hours trading.

Countrywide, the No. 1 mortgage lender, said the “unprecedented disruptions” in the credit markets could adversely affect its earnings and financial condition. The Calabasas-based lender said in a regulatory filing that the market turmoil has forced it to hang on to more mortgage loans than it would like, rather than selling them to investors.

Although the company said it believed it has “adequate liquidity” to roll with the mortgage market turbulence, Countrywide cautioned that “the situation is rapidly evolving and the potential impact on the company is unknown.”

Washington Mutual, the third-largest U.S. mortgage lender, offered much the same admonition in its filing. The Seattle-based bank said the trouble in the sub-prime secondary mortgage market in the first half of the year has “spread” into markets for other, better-quality loans as well, making it hard to predict how its loan business will fare.

“The company cannot predict with any degree of certainty how long these market conditions may continue or whether liquidity . . . will improve,” Washington Mutual said.

Panic-stricken investors, watching the nation’s housing market deteriorate as overextended borrowers fall into foreclosure at near-record numbers, have recoiled from buying less-than-prime mortgages — and the securities that back them — on the secondary market. As a result, lenders have fewer channels to sell off the loans they have made to customers.

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