Mortgage Lenders With Seriously Delinquent And Defaulted Mortgages Have New Option To Tackle Most Difficult Loans

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors launched to turn the most challenging defaulted loans into re-performing assets

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, LLC, a Dallas area-based mortgage servicing specialist, has announced it has opened its doors to assist lenders and servicers plagued by seriously delinquent loans. The service, which applies a unique borrower-focused servicing methodology, is aimed at not only at mitigating losses, but at actually helping borrowers achieve full payment status, resulting in “re-performing” loans for lenders who had little hope of saving these transactions from foreclosure.

The company was founded and is led by servicing industry veteran Steven Horne, a lawyer who formerly served as director of Servicing Risk Strategy with Fannie Mae. He spent nine years as a partner with Sherman Financial Group, where he built three of the firm’s most successful business lines, including a unit that purchased and resolved portfolios of delinquent mortgage loans. He also served as director of default servicing for Ocwen, where he provided outsourcing services to Freddie Mac. Wingspan’s senior management team includes industry veterans with decades of proven default servicing success at many leading companies.

The mission of Wingspan Portfolio Advisors is to give servicers, investors and other stakeholders, such as mortgage insurance companies, a fighting chance to save loans that otherwise would have gone to foreclosure. “There are very few specialists out there with the tools and skills needed to cure these nonperforming mortgages, and so many times these loans, and especially the ones with low equity or low balances, are given up on,” explains Steven Horne, CEO and founder of Wingspan Portfolio Advisors. “We have created a methodology that uses data and metrics to help us establish scenarios that offer hope to investors and borrowers alike. Our team of highly experienced and dedicated specialists understands that the ultimate value of a nonperforming mortgage does not depend exclusively on collateral value, but also on the borrower’s psychology.”

Traditional servicing methods rely on net present value (NPV) to arrive at decisions, Horne says, and that creates an assumption that loans outside the loss mitigation model can never be saved. “We think of ourselves as the investor’s ‘wingman,’ adding an additional layer of protection on defaulting loans,” he says. “We don’t arrive at the decision that a loan is lost before we completely understand the situation. That means using advanced analytics that consider each factor affecting the loan and exploring every servicing strategy open to us.” Informed listening helps establish trust with borrowers in Wingspan Portfolio Advisors’ methodology, and that combines readily with a non-monetary consideration Horne calls “psychological equity.” In essence, it means that if borrowers truly have the desire to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes, they will make many sacrifices to do so. “In those scenarios,” Horne says, “our specialized workflow and command of the facts through superior information management helps us find a structure that can lead a loan back to performing status.”

One of the keys to success at Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, Horne says, is the right incentive plan for his specialists, who achieve 50 percent or more of their income by bringing loans back from the brink of foreclosure to paying status. “Once they’ve accomplished that, we switch the case over to other specialists whose jobs entail keeping the payments flowing until the loan is contractually current,” Horne notes. “The loans with the greatest opportunity for success are concentrated with the highest skill positions, and we use DRI Management Systems’ default solution platform with our own workflow parameters to keep the right people on the job at all times.” This provides a very high degree of touch with borrowers, according to Horne, who adds, “We even monitor call times to make certain a sufficient amount of time is spent with each borrower. That’s another departure from traditional servicing methods, but our borrowers need that extra attention if they are going to have a chance to succeed at bringing their mortgage current.”

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors’ level of “extreme servicing” is abetted by human nature. Part of “psychological equity” is the borrower’s emotional attachment to their home, and its power should not be underestimated. Most servicers regard the whole process as a dollars and cents equation, but Wingspan Portfolio Advisors recognizes that there is much more to it in the eyes of the borrower. “Borrowers always think the house is worth more than it is because they have personal capital invested in it,” he says. “We make certain they appreciate those factors, as well as the social cost of losing the home and the difficulty in replacing it once it is gone.” Wingspan Portfolio Advisors provides a lifeline, and it is a very powerful link between defaulting borrowers and servicing rights owners.

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors officially ”got off the ground” in September of this year, and will be announcing its first major client relationship next month.

About Wingspan Portfolio Advisors

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors of Carrollton, Texas, is a specialty servicing enterprise that applies advanced and highly specialized servicing techniques to turn non-performing loans into re-performing assets. The company was founded by Steven Horne, a highly-experienced attorney and expert on servicing distressed assets. Wingspan Portfolio Advisors’ senior management team has over 125 years of collective specialty loan servicing experience, focusing on severely delinquent first and second mortgages for lenders, servicers and investors. For more information on Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, please visit www.WingspanAdvisors.com .