In 2006, I borrowed money against my property at which I resided in New York City.
Emigrant Funding Corp. aka Emigrant Mortgage Company, Inc. (subsidiaries of Emigrant Savings Bank) paid $400,000 for the first mortgage on my property appraised at $850,000 and later sold by me for $1,150,000 in mid-2007.
Initially, Emigrant did not allow me to sell the property, because the mortgage note did not allow the prepayment of the loan. I offered them to prepay the installment interest at 9.25% with the unpaid loan principal in advance so I could sell the property. They refused. So, I stopped the repayment of the loan in installments all together to effectuate the sale of the property.
Once Emigrant trigerred the installment default and secured the installment default interest of 24%, they allowed me to sell the property which I did.
Emigrant allowed me to sell the property ( I needed and waited for a required pay-off loan account statement from Emigrant for the sale closing), after Emigrant filed a foreclosure complaint.
Emigrant told me that I needed to payback the unpaid principal plus a default interest of 24% for a fixed number of years in advance now or they will loot my equity in the property at the default rate of 24% during the foreclosure proceedings (time consuming process).
I sold the property a week after I received the Pay-off letetr from Emigrant. I left on the table with the closing title company all the amounts Emigrant wanted in the letter. So, Emigrant collected unearned (unaccrued) interest on the principal after it accelarated the maturity date of the mortgage for over $100,000 in interest.
The effective rate of interest for Emigrant on a mortgage loan of $400,000 was close to $170,000 from January of 2006 to May of 2007 when they got their loan back.
I forgot to add that at the inception of the mortgage, Emigrant retained over $25,000 as a condition of making the loan equal to six monthly installments. To date, Emigrant did not account for the amount. The last thing they said in court was that it was probably some closing costs or something. They case is now on appeal in the Second Department, New York.
This is to let others know what happens when you have a mortgage loan with Emigrant and want to sell the property for whatever reason.
Gregory
Palm Coast,#2Author of original report
Tue, December 01, 2009
In the most recent appellate court ruling of November 2009, the court concluded that Emigrant's mortgage loans on some New York mixed-use residential rental properties were usurious under GOL 5-501(3)(b).
See below
http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2009/2009_08780.htm