When you deal with the banks do you feel like this kitten??
As a small buisness owner who employed over 50 tax paying Americans when I started doing business with Everbank, and now is struggling to keep 20 employed I am not at all happy with Everbank.
After Everbank hired the banker I was using at another bank I followed him to Everbank with our main Mortgage and Credit Line. In less than 2 years Everbank released most of their commercial lending department and went about the buisness of pushing the commercial customers out, at a time when small business needed the support and backing of our banks the most. In my instant their actions have been questionable at best.
Our main plant building has been on the market since early 2007 with very few lookers. It is 40,000 sf on 5 commercial acres 3 miles from the newest container port in Jacksonville Florida.
In March of 2009 our broker found a potential buyer for our main plant. In what I thought was a stroke of luck the buyer was also a customer of Everbanks. His business was doing better than ours and he was looking to purchase. Our building matched his needs perfectly. What sure looked like a good opportunity for Everbank to avoid loosing any money and be a win, win for everyone. Through Everbanks poor handling of the opportunity has wound up being a loose, loose especially for us!
Everbank would not allow the buyer to assume our mortgage at back in April or May. Everbanks preference was for our company to continue trying to find a buyer that could buy outright or as a fallback lease the building to the potential buyer until his balance sheet got better looking to the bank. Heck I think every business in the country has a marginal balance sheet at best, that’s why we are in what’s called a “Recession” no matter what the buyers books looked like they had to be better than ours, and he would at least be paying the payment.
In the lease I would have had to have the buyer send all payments directly to Everbank except the 7 % sales tax that I would have had to collect and remit to the state. And then sometime down the road sell the building to the buyer. At the time we had discontinued making our mortgage payment and were moving back into one of our smaller facilities in an attempt to cut overhead and stay in business. And did not have time to run our business and be a commercial landlord. We offered the building back to Everbank. They did not want the poor performing asset on their books so they asked me to just keep trying to get it sold. We were still not able to be paying anything. Well Everbank decides to do the loan for our buyer but it would create a very small short sale. Months go by and Everbank finally sets a closing date. The day before the closing Everbank decides to allow our buyer to assume our mortgage instead of initiating a new one. Wow that's what we suggested 7 months and over $100,000.00 in interest and fees accrued. Now In my minds eye Everbank dealt in very bad faith with us and it sure looks like they were just running up the money clock up. They get to charge the interest, legal fees and such from us for 7 months and we are right back where we started.. This is the kind of crap our bankers do for all sorts of reasons, especially if it raises their bottom line.
I did not sign the closing papers so now I will probably get the crap sued out of me by the buyer, the banker, maybe both real estate brokers. The way my luck is running it would surprise me if I were to also be sued by the whole world as I am obviously a complete fool being an entrepreneur. Maybe I should have been a banker also, Nahh I’d be too embarrassed to let anyone know what I did for a living.
Well after numerous communnications back and forth between us and Everbank over the last week we show up for closing at 3 pm Friday as we were asked to do. I had been very clear with John Stout Everbank VP of commercial lending that I would not sign if the documents had an "Lawyer Bait" style clauses or sentences. Well we get to the closing attorneys office and due to bad weather and the buyer already called and told us he was running late. So my wife and I begin signing the documents the closing attorney had. These docs had been emailed to us earlier in the day and we had had time to review them which was a good thing. While in the process of signing the buyer comes in. but still no representative for Everbank. We continue signing and exchanging documents when low and behold the buyer passes a document to the closing attorney that also requireing our signatures. At 4:30 on a rainy Friday afternoon guess whats laid in front of us. Oh yeah! A new document drafted by Everbank or it's attorneys that we had not seen until this time, man I am now so tired of being ambushed by Everbank at the eleventh hour I am pretty upset. But Everbank would not know this yet because the banker John Stout did not have the decancy to show up until well after we would have been signed. About 25 minutes after the buyer who was already late did. The form was a second release, we had already signed the one release in the original documents, but in typical Banker-lawyerease ( thats that language that normal people don't uunderstand so we pay more lawyers to translate it into english) this form had a statement that allowed the mortgagee the right to apply all parts of the oringinal note and mortgage that was issued to us in the event that the new buyer fails to honor his side of the assumption.
the closing attorney who seems to be a real nice knowledgeable fellow proceeds to explain to me that the realease we had already signed would supersede this release. Well I am no Rhodes Scholar but as I understand thing the word supersedes means replaces a previously done thing. And since we had signed a previous release earlier where Everbank and us would have released each other from everything related to reporting, sueing, claiming and I think it even forbid us to spit on each others sidewalks( you it it was written by lawyers and bankers) It sure looked like we were sign a new release allowing the Mortgagee (Everbank) to SUPERSEDE OUR RIGHTS TO BE RELEASED. And had we signed all of the documents we were also being asked to waive our rights to a jury trial in the event of any future claims. Yippie, then if something was wrong we would get to have our claim or Everbanks claim tried and heard before a Judge only. In Florida all Judges must be lawyers. I don't mean this disrespectful to the robe, but our forefathers laid down provisions for trials of any kind to be held and decided in front of a jury of our fellow citezens. Later in time the legal establishment figured out UH OH, maybe we need to cut this fair jury thing down some. it's a whole lot easier to convince a well educated Judge who happens to be a Lawyer and quite possibly has knows a banker or two to rule in the banks favor, I don't know this for sure but it sure smells funny! and I insist on pleading anything I am involved in before a jury. Now if there is nothing wrong with what Everbank is doing, Why would they not agree to a trial by Jury in the event of a problem?
Mark Fleischer
