Kondaur Capital Corp., which a month ago slashed its loan workout staff by nearly 40%, announced Tuesday that it hired Mark Ferrara as managing director of its newly formed community banking group.
Ferrara will be in charge of developing working relationships with small to midsize depositories nationwide, coaxing them to sell their nonperforming mortgages to the privately held firm.
Kondaur, of Orange, Calif., boasted that it is the nation's "largest and most frequent purchaser of non-performing loans secured by one-to-four-family residences, often paying the highest prices on a loan-by-loan basis."
However, the nonperforming loan market has been tough the past few months with some sellers refusing to sell loans at the "bid" price.
"I have account executives out there talking to credit unions and community banks, and it's not working. They don't want to sell," said an investor in nonperforming loans, who requested that his name not be published.
Kondaur said that Ferrara has 25 years of mortgage banking and real estate development experience, and was managing director of Silver Bay Advisors, a consulting firm formed to assist the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco early in the financial crisis.
As a consultant to the home loan bank, Ferrara headed an on-site due diligence team, and was "directly involved in the asset bids of Indy Mac Bank, First Federal Bank, First Bank of Oak Park, Cal National Bank, San Diego National Bank, Pacific National Bank, Bank of Beverly Hills and others," Kondaur said.
