The housing market here has not yet brought much demand for their specialty, but a five-man team of real estate professionals in Westchester County has launched a consulting firm to assist financial institutions and developers with workouts of non-performing residential properties.
At 120 Summit Lake Drive in Valhalla, partners in SMR Housing and Development Specialists anticipate a growing demand for professionals who can “help turn around troubled properties,” said SMR partner Don Smolev, founder of The Marcon Group Ltd., a residential sales and marketing company at the same Valhalla location. “This has taken on a new urgency in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis,” he said.
Other SMR partners are Anthony Miceli, owner of A. Miceli & Associates, Carmel, and former CEO for a developer; William Riehl, a former vice president and chief construction officer for a developer and head of W. Riehl & Associates, a construction management firm in Rye Brook, Gregg Smolev and Douglas Smolev, both associated too with The Marcon Group. Together the partners have more than 130 years of experience in the residential real estate field.
In addition to assisting on workouts of non-performing properties, SMR also will assist developers and land owners who must build their projects in order to keep their approvals in place or risk having lending institutions terminate agreements and loans. “We also have investors available who are interested in purchasing land or partially built developments at realistic prices,” said Smolev.
With home builders hammered by financial problems, prospective sellers looking to “flip” land for development now have trouble finding buyers, Gregg Smolev said. “Most builders are trying to sell off some of their holdings, not add on to them,” he said. SMR will provide fee-based services to those land owners who are not builders themselves to take a project through the planning and approval process and build, market and sell the residential property.
Douglas Smolev said SMR offers developers and financial institutions the sales and marketing services to jump-start a troubled development. “We know the region”™s housing market and know what buyers are looking for in terms of design, floor plans and features. More importantly, we know what they”™re willing to pay in today”™s market,” he said.
“We looked at the market and saw that nobody else with our capabilities was offering this kind of service,” said Miceli. “Nobody has a team with this level of expertise and understanding of the market. This is the perfect time for our kind of firm.”
For real estate troubleshooters, the time might be more perfect in other parts of the nation than in Westchester. Foreclosed or stalled developments and non-performing properties are more likely to be found in the outer suburbs of Dutchess and Orange counties and Long Island, central New Jersey and parts of Connecticut than in this suburban county, Gregg Smolev said. “In our market area, we really haven”™t seen too much of that yet,” he said. “While we”™re anticipating that, we don”™t expect the severe problems that we”™ve had elsewhere.”
