Two Westchester real estate professionals are applying their knowledge and contacts in the region”™s residential market to a new business venture to assist qualified homeowners in avoiding foreclosure in the recession.
“We”™re inundated with calls,” real estate attorney David A. Nigrelli said last week at his Tarrytown law office at 220 White Plains Road, where he and business partner Michael S. Luchen, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Real Estate L.L.C. in White Plains, have started Guardian Modifications and Consulting L.L.C. The company employs attorneys, paralegals and mortgage bankers to assist struggling owners in modifying home loans and negotiates with lenders to avert foreclosures.
Nigrelli said he and Luchen in their legal and brokerage work have been handling short sales of homes since the metropolitan real estate market began to slow in the second half of 2007. A few months ago, he said, the partners realized that about half of those homeowners could afford their mortgages and keep their homes if loans were refinanced at fixed rates or lenders agreed to an alternative payment plan at temporarily reduced rates. So a business was born.
With a national epidemic of housing foreclosures, “There are so many companies, so many people trying to jump on the bandwagon” by offering loan modification services, Nigrelli said. Many of them have negotiated mortgage adjustments for homeowners who are again delinquent on payments that are still too high, he said.
Nigrelli said Guardian works only with clients that can afford modified loan payments from employment or rental income and are not heavily burdened with other debt. “Probably out of every 10 calls, nine people we can help,” he said. “We”™re not looking to help the homeowner who wants to beat the system. We”™re not looking to defraud the banks and there are people trying to do that.”
The partners are working with homeowners in both New York and New Jersey, where Nigrelli is licensed also to practice law. “We”™re finding a majority of the clients are having severe financial issues” due to decreased home values, lost jobs and personal losses such as divorce or a death in the family, he said. Nigrelli said the mortgage and foreclosure crisis is affecting the Westchester County market too, especially in areas such as Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Peekskill, Ossining, Cortlandt Manor and Port Chester.
The business has had a number of referrals from Realtors, accountants, attorneys and mortgage bankers. “My phone has been ringing off the wall,” he said. “This business is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week thing.”
Banks are so inundated with delinquent mortgage payments and impending foreclosures that “they”™re open now” to making deals with borrowers to keep them in their homes, Nigrelli said. That dealmaking should soon increase as President Barack Obama”™s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan is implemented. Nigrelli and Luchen last week were awaiting details of the plan to see how those federal funds can be tapped in their new business.
The $75-billion federal initiative is intended to help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners stay in their homes by offering reduced monthly mortgage payments and provide up to 4 million to 5 million homeowners with new access to refinancing.
“The more people that take advantage of the loan modifications, the faster the economy is going to turn around,” Nigrelli said. Without those adjustments, “We”™re headed for a greater depression than what is going on now.”
The partners have staked out a new niche for the times in the region”™s no longer thriving real estate market. ”˜Right now, where the market is, I think the prices in this area still have a long way to go in terms of declining,” Nigrelli said.
