National City Corp. announced yesterday that it was merging its broker-based home equity lending unit into its bank-based mortgage operations.

The announcement comes after the broker-based lending division, National Home Equity, suspended approvals of new home equity loans and lines of credit earlier in the month due to tightening conditions in secondary mortgage markets.

"Market conditions are clearly what is driving us to scale back," said company spokeswoman Kristen Baird Adams.

The merger of National Home Equity into National City Mortgage Co. will not affect the ability of home buyers to get home equity loans directly from their bank branches, said Ms. Adams, noting that National Home Equity made loans exclusively through mortgage brokers.

Cleveland-based National City said it would be folding jobs for some of the 450 employees of National Home Equity into National City Mortgage Co. and eliminating other positions, though it declined to specify how many. The vast majority of those 450 employees worked in the Cleveland area or elsewhere in Ohio, Ms. Adams said.