SW Houston News

A Sugar Land hotel's general manager recently appealed to his congressional representative to stop lenders that use "vulture tactics" to prey on borrowers hard struck by the COVID-19 pandemic's economic impact.

Lenders circling over the pandemic-distressed properties "are well within their legal rights to do," Noori Janjani, general manager of the 300-room Marriott Sugar Land, said in his April 2 letter to retiring U.S. Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX).

In a copy of the two-page letter obtained by the SW Houston News, Janjani told Olson that lenders' schemes are "unconscionable from a moral perspective and stand starkly against the principles that we share here in the United States."

"Frankly, to take advantage of this crisis for the sake of better returns for some New York hedge fund strikes me as unAmerican," Janjani continued in his letter. "The negative impact to hotel owners and their employees of these vulture tactics will be long lasting."

Olson, a former U.S. Navy pilot first elected to the U.S. House in 2008, announced last summer that he would not seek reelection this year.

The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020 (CARES Act) passed by Congress, with Olson's support, late last month provides some foreclosure relief, mostly for family-owned properties.

In addition, some states have set up foreclosure moratoriums and stays, often protecting properties of various sizes from lenders' asset seizures when payments are not made during the pandemic.

Texas is currently not one of those states.

Larger properties received some protection in an interagency statement issued March 22 by the Federal Reserve, FDIC and other regulatory agencies that encouraged the nation's banks to work proactively with borrowers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The agencies encourage financial institutions to work prudently with borrowers who are or may be unable to meet their contractual payment obligations because of the effects of COVID-19," the statement said. "The agencies view loan modification programs as positive actions that can mitigate adverse effects on borrowers due to COVID-19. The agencies will not criticize institutions for working with borrowers and will not direct supervised institutions to automatically categorize all COVID-19 related loan modifications as troubled debt restructurings (TDRs)."

Janjani called the interagency statement "undoubtedly a step in the right direction" but said not all borrowers have loans from FDIC-insured banks.

"However, billions of dollars of hotel loans in our country come from unregulated non-banks such as hedge funds and other investment funds," Janjani wrote. "Since the Federal Reserve and the FDIC have no direct oversight of these firms, they are unlikely to follow the previously mentioned guidance. They are more likely to take a different approach: the use of vulture tactics to extract as much 'value' out of the hotel as possible without any regard for the current crisis or the hotel employees or hotel owners involved."

Those vulture tactics include accelerating the foreclosure process to gather as many COVID-19-distressed properties as possible, using "small technical ways" to rush loan defaults, denying borrowers existing escrowed funds and slowing reimbursements on collateral, said Janjani.

"Representative Olson, I urge you, Congress, the Federal Reserve and other governmental agencies to move quickly to address this situation before hotels across this country are mercilessly foreclosed on due to no fault of their own," Janjani said. "To the extent additional legislation related to COVID-19 is proposed, I would recommend adding language that introduces an 18-month moratorium on ALL foreclosure proceedings for ALL lenders to hotels. This should give hotels the time they will need to come up with reasonable solutions and strategies with their lenders to ensure that they have their loans paid off and avoid unnecessarily enriching hedge fund vultures."