A plain vanilla real estate loan went bad, and the lender called us for help. Back in the good old days of 2007 when property prices were shooting up, lenders needed only to value buildings. If the developer couldn’t pay, the building would generate good cash flow and could be held for income or flipped. Then the crash of 2008 happened, values plunged and this building went bankrupt. Like many lenders, our client had to begin executing on the personal guarantee signed by the developers.

That was where we came in. Lenders accustomed to valuing buildings are not as good as finding the assets of  borrowers who don’t feel like honoring their debts. We are experienced at finding both the real property as well as other assets (shares in LLC’s, accounts receivable, real property owned in the name of spouses and others, to name just a few). We are experts at identifying fraudulently conveyed assets.

In this case we discovered the developer had companies in a variety of business sectors outside of real estate – some well outside his normal geographical business area. We also uncovered litigation that helped identify assets, companies and numbers of brokerage accounts.