Many of the commercial and residential tenants in the Bronx during the pandemic could not afford to pay their rent during the pandemic or chose not to because the government did not make payment mandatory. As a result the owner of the building, Adam Leitman Bailey’s client, could not make its mortgage payment. Adam Leitman Bailey’s mission was to seek a modification of the loan or an extension of the time to pay or a reduction in the payments to the lender.
This was not just any client but an Adam Leitman Bailey client of over a decade that has always made their mortgage payments on time. For many months, our client contacted their bank by phone and email in hopes of receiving an extension on one of their loans. When our client first requested the extension, the bank contact seemed willing to assist with processing the extension. However, the bank contact then went completely radio silent and ignored our client’s various emails and voicemail messages. The client wrote letters and even visited the bank contact in person and pleaded with the bank.
This is when the client asked Adam Leitman Bailey to step in. “We know this is not your usual game. We know that Adam Leitman Bailey only represents lenders and this lender has not been smart enough to hire you for closings or foreclosures but we need your aggressiveness and persuasiveness in convincing them to help us out here. In fact, you are our last hope before we hand in the keys.”
That is when Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. stepped in. We contacted the bank on a weekly basis on behalf of our client, and worked persistently and tirelessly until we received a response from the bank. We first reached out to the bank contact our client had originally contacted. We then reached out to the bank contact’s manager to inform them of the situation, and to let them know that our client was being ignored. After several weeks of consistently sending follow-up emails to the bank contact and the bank contact’s manager, who both remained unresponsive, we took our efforts a step further.
We remembered a seldom used legal theory whereby Adam Leitman Bailey sent a letter asserting that since we had not heard from the bank on our offers to extend our time to pay the loan without incurring interest that the bank’s silence had indicated that it had accepted our offer.
Adam Leitman Bailey P.C.’s creative letter stated that “since our Borrower-client had not received a rejection, we would be treating the Bank’s silence as an acceptance to their request for an extension.” Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. chose this strategy to put pressure on the bank and ultimately ensure our client had a defense in place in the event the bank decided to claim our client was in default. For the first time since the pandemic started, we received a response from the lender. Shortly thereafter, although rejected our legal theory, the bank granted our client the extension they had been hoping for, allowing our client to continue to operate the building. Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. succeeded in obtaining a mortgage extension on behalf of our Borrower-Client.
Adam Leitman Bailey and Michelle Brown helped secure this loan extension for our client.
