Should a property manager take on servicing a wraparound mortgage for a client
Take a small management shop with a client who sold a 6-unit on a wraparound mortgage and asked the manager to also handle the payment side, alongside continuing to manage the property for the new owner. A typical structure: seller owed 412k at 4.1 percent, sold at 690k, buyer put 60k down, seller carries 630k at 7.25 percent on a 30 year with a five year balloon, netting the seller a spread of roughly 28k a year. The manager would collect the buyer's payment, remit a portion to the seller's underlying lender, and forward the remainder to the seller, while continuing to manage the building for the buyer. The real issues to work through: One, collecting a mortgage payment is not the same as collecting rent, and trust accounting and licensing built for rent may not extend to loan servicing. Whether this crosses into loan servicing territory is a licensing question that varies by state and belongs with an attorney, not a forum answer. Two, the manager would effectively be acting for both sides, managing for the buyer while remitting to the seller. If the buyer goes late, whose interest is being protected when deciding whether to advance the underlying payment out of the manager's own float becomes a real conflict question. Three, standard property management software is not built for amortization schedules, interest allocation for the 1098 the seller needs to issue, or late fee logic that differs from rent late fees. On pricing, dedicated servicing companies commonly quote 30 to 45 a month for the collection and escrow piece, since they have built systems specifically for it, which is worth weighing against any higher in house quote for the same function. The more defensible paths tend to be referring the servicing out to a specialist and staying on the management side only, or taking the relationship and immediately subcontracting the servicing piece to a specialist while keeping the client relationship intact. Building the capability in house for one client, when specialists already do it cheaper and with purpose-built systems, is usually not a strong business reason on its own.