(FORTUNE Magazine) – The already punch-drunk California thrift industry took two more body blows when Beverly Hills Savings & Loan failed and was taken over by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and Bell National Corp., a holding company based in San Mateo, announced that the net worth of its principal subsidiary, Bell Savings & Loan, was wiped out by fourth-quarter losses estimated at $60 million. Both thrifts blamed their troubles on large losses from sour real estate loans. Beverly Hills (assets: $2.9 million) said its problem loans were spread among commercial projects in the Los Angeles area and parts of the Southwest, while Bell (last reported assets: $1.9 billion) attributed most of its woes to Silicon Valley, where a shakeout among high-tech companies left a glut of commercial space. While the entire savings and loan industry has had its problems, some California S&Ls have made things worse for themselves by lending money with abandon. As deposits pile up, S&Ls are forced to invest to keep ahead of interest payments they make to depositors. Says John Carr, executive vice president of First Nationwide Savings, a San Francisco thrift appointed by the Bank Board to manage the reconstituted Beverly Hills S&L, ''The demands placed on a company by such fast growth in deposits require that you go into riskier real estate markets.'' Some parts of the commercial real estate market in California are among the most overbuilt in the U.S. Of major cities, only Denver and Houston have higher vacancy rates for commercial properties than the 16.4% in Los Angeles, according to Coldwell Banker, a real estate brokerage firm. That's still below the 33% rate in Silicon Valley calculated by Grubb & Ellis, a San Francisco real estate firm.