SFL Biz Journals: USDV atrapa préstamos problemáticos

U.S. Debt Ventures snaps up problem loans

Premium content from South Florida Business Journal by Brian Bandell

Date: Friday, April 29, 2011, 6:00am EDT

Todd Billings and Jamie Zambrana have gone from being wealth advisers to controlling delinquent mortgages for thousands of homeowners.


Billings and Zambrana, who met 15 years ago when they were Nasdaq traders on Wall Street, now run Veriloquent Wealth Advisors and U.S. Debt Ventures in Coral Springs. The latter company recently purchased $500 million in nonperforming residential mortgages from a major bank at a significant discount. Billings said he plans to work with borrowers, even discounting principal, to keep them in their homes when it makes sense.

“If I know it would make more sense to keep you in the house, paying a mortgage you can afford, versus going in foreclosure and having you rip out the electronics and appliances, I would work out the loan,” Billings said.

So, how did a new company with 11 employees acquire such a large portfolio? Billings said it started at the Fort Lauderdale office of U.S. Trust, where he was a wealth adviser working with many high-net-worth families. In November 2008, he and Zambrana formed Veriloquent – and took many of his clients with him.

Those wealthy clients saw opportunities to buy large portfolios of problem loans, and Billings and Zambrana helped arrange the deals. For the first one, they led the purchase of $65 million in delinquent loans from Miami Lakes-based BankUnited.

“I couldn’t believe it would trade like that,” Billings said. “We don’t see deals that good anymore today.”

In order to facilitate more deals, they set up U.S. Debt Ventures. They hired a loan servicing company and attorneys to manage the loans.

Billings said they raised more than $100 million to buy loans, but he is not looking to solicit outside investors. He has plenty of capital from his clients.

U.S. Debt Ventures is in the market for a 20,000- to 30,000-square-foot building for its growth, although it would initially lease out much of the space, Billings said. It is also open to purchasing problem commercial real estate loans.

Zambrana said the key is bidding the right price for loans, even after factoring in borrower credit and the possibility that some loans might not be well documented.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/print-edition/2011/04/29/coral-springs-us-debt-ventures.html?page=all