PacWest Services Inc., a Spokane mortgage company and real estate brokerage, has moved to a smaller building it bought recently and has sold its longtime building downtown.

Its new location is on the North Side, in a two-story, 4,000-square-foot building at 24 W. Indiana, says Tim Swartout, PacWest's CEO.

PacWest had owned a three-story, 12,000-square-foot building at the northwest corner of Second Avenue and Stevens Street downtown for 18 years, but no longer needed all of that space, Swartout says.

"We didn't use the second and third floors and a third of the main floor," he says. "We decided to sell the building and received a good offer."

Jim Orcutt, of NAI Black, a Spokane-area commercial real estate brokerage, bought the downtown building for $600,000 as an investment, Swartout says.

PacWest bought the building on Indiana for $215,000 from Joe Shogan, Spokane City Council president, who had operated his private law practice there, Swartout says.

In the 1990s, when PacWest's staff peaked at about 20 employees, the company occupied the entire downtown building, he says.

PacWest now has five employees, a staffing level it has been at for about three years, he says.

"I can't attribute the decline in employee numbers to what's happened in the last few months," he says. "I attribute it mostly to technology."

PacWest has been in the mortgage business since 1994. Swartout says it hasn't been affected as much by the credit crisis as other brokerages around the country.

"We were never in the business of sub-prime loans," he says. "Some products have diminished, but we've still got viable products."