SEATTLE – The nationwide housing slump and collapsed mortgage markets have taken yet another toll on Washington Mutual – specifically, on its employees and shareholders.

The Seattle-based thrift, one of the nation’s largest home lenders, said Monday it will cut 3,150 jobs, mostly in its struggling home loans business; shutter nearly two-thirds of its home-loan stores; close its 5-year-old mortgage-backed securities brokerage; and slash its dividend to 15 cents per share.

The company also said it would sell $2.5 billion worth of convertible preferred stock. That, along with the dividend cut and the other closures and reductions, should give WaMu $3.7 billion more in capital to work with as it tries to ride out the nation’s worst financial crisis since the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

WaMu, like other big players in the once-booming mortgage market, has been whipsawed by negative developments on both ends of its business. With prices and sales volumes dropping across much of the country, more and more homeowners are defaulting on their home loans – and not just the “subprime” loans that have garnered most of the public attention.

That has eroded the secondary markets for mortgages on which WaMu and other lenders have long relied to continue supplying cash for their lending operations, and left them holding untold thousands of mortgages of dubious value.

WaMu made its announcement minutes after regular trading ended on the New York Stock Exchange. In after-hours trading, WaMu shares were trading at $18.33, down $1.55 or more than 7 percent, after ending the regular session at $19.88, up 85 cents.

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AP-NY-12-10-07 1753EST