Tag: nashville bankruptcies

Are the Nashville Construction Defaults a Leading Indicator that the Nashville Market has finally turned?

I saw something at a Nashville foreclosure yesterday that I hadn’t seen in years.

A luxury, high end house in a great neighborhood was auctioned, and nobody showed up to bid. The Lender bought it back at a credit bid. (In the spirit of disclosure, it was a $2MM+ credit bid. They weren’t quite giving it away, but this is Nashville).

It reminded me of foreclosures in the Great Recession, when you’d stand on the courthouse steps, reading a foreclosure sale notice to nobody and, invariably, your bank would become the new owner of the property.

Back in 2008, lenders were dealing with the after-effects of an easy-money market. Builders with good credit built too many houses, too fast, and the market had a glut of inventory, with no buyers in sight.

The lack of buyer-credit meant that new sales couldn’t keep up with the builder’s debt obligations. It was sort of a ponzi scheme, as sales of today’s houses were necessary to pay for yesterday’s construction costs. When the money level dipped, lots of partially built spec homes got foreclosed, after the builder’s new money ran out and they were defaulted or simply gave up.

I thought about 2008 yesterday.

As much free-flowing money as there’s been in the Nashville retail-buyer and foreclosure market over the last 4-5 years, it was a surprise to see that sale fall flat yesterday. In the last year, I’ve done foreclosures in Nashville with 20-30 bidders present. But, on a sunny Thursday, with a Belmont-Hillsboro Village house on the block, and there are no bidders, buyers, or bankers willing to refinance?

Could this be a leading indicator of a larger problem in Middle Tennessee?

The signs are there. This exuberant builder refurbished a modest 1920s bungalow, to construct a 8,712 square foot, 2 car garage, 5 bedroom, 8 bath outlier, originally offered for $3,675,000 (estimated monthly payment of $20,012). The house isn’t entirely finished–it looks like contractor work on the new backyard pool and outdoor area has stopped.

The builder has more than a dozen projects throughout Nashville, in similar stages of “in progress” construction. The builder also has a number of pending foreclosures and twice as many pending lawsuits. The construction on a number of the sites seems to have simply stopped.

Just a few years ago, just one high-end property selling for top-dollar would have bought an over-extended builder a few months, finished another project, and lead to another sale, but it seems like the buyer market has waned as well. When both buyers and banks get cautious, risky bets come due.

There are a number of peculiarities here that may make a broad-takeaway unreliable. But, with that caveat, I’m seeing lots of the same issues and patterns that we saw in 2008.

Plus, by mid-morning, I’d learned that the developer filed a Bankruptcy. Just like they did in 2008.

Nashville Post: The Bankruptcies are Coming, but Where are the Bankruptcy Attorneys?

If a creditor rights attorney appears in a movie or TV show, he is generally the bad guy who galvanizes the stars of the movie to assemble a dance competition to save the community center from foreclosure.

In fact, for a long time, my LinkedIn bio described my creditor’s rights bankruptcy practice as:

This is an area of law they don’t make movies about. In fact, the only movie about creditor bankruptcy attorneys that I know of is Heart and Souls, a 1993 movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. In that movie, his childhood guardian angels come back to Earth to re-visit him as an adult and are horrified by what he does for a living. Well, that’s my job.

As a result, insolvency attorneys tend to be slightly self-conscious about our role in the legal ecosystem. When our law firms’ clients host open houses at their glitzy new facilities or shiny, over-budget restaurants, it’s the bankruptcy attorneys standing by the bar who eyeball it all and wonder how much all it cost and whether they can pay for it.

(Note: I’m actually kidding about this…the bankruptcy attorneys actually never get invited to grand openings or fun events. Kidding.)

So, in light of all that, you can imagine how proud I was that the Nashville Post ran a magazine article this week showcasing the starring role to be played by bankruptcy attorneys in the coming months and years.

Step aside, corporate mergers and acquisitions counsel, this is a job for a Bankruptcy Lawyer.

It’s a well-done article, with spot-on analysis of the issues facing our local economy. This quote from local debtor counsel Nancy King really nails the current mindset:

Most companies right now are either in the stunned phase, or they’re in the ‘I want to work it out with my bank’ phase, or possibly the ‘I’ve gotten a PPP loan, I think I might make it’ phase. … When all that comes to an end, I think Chapter 11 is going to end up being an option for a lot of those companies.

One of the most interesting aspects of the article is the narrative that there aren’t enough bankruptcy lawyers in Nashville.

It’s absolutely true.

Nashville is widely known as having a sophisticated bankruptcy bar, due to the wide range of complex cases that get filed in our district (both consumer and commercial), our really smart judges, and a deep roster of sophisticated bankruptcy lawyers.

Nevertheless, when the Middle Tennessee economy rebounded so quickly from the Great Recession, local law firms simply didn’t restaff their bankruptcy practice groups. Instead, from 2013 to 2019, the smart young lawyers went into real estate, development, and corporate work.

As a result, most Nashville law firms have bankruptcy practices that are, basically, composed of the same bankruptcy lawyers who steered the ship in the last recession. Sort of like the 2012-13 Boston Celtics–a good team, but lots of veterans and hardly any young prospects.

We’ve known this is coming for a long time. In fact, at the 2019 Bankruptcy Lawyer Holiday Party (yes, it’s a real thing), the three most popular party guests were the three new faces (all under the age of 30). They were subjected to an endless barrage of business cards, lunch invites, and recruiting pitches that night.

In fact, one of those young lawyers has already been poached away by an out-of-state law firm that has one of the largest bankruptcy practice groups in the country.

So, my advice to young law school graduates (or students)?

Learn Bankruptcy. Read the Bankruptcy Code. It’s literally an inch thick. There’s always another recession around the corner.

You’ll have a great (and long) career.

Also, while you’re quarantined at home, watch Heart and Souls. It really is a fun, under-appreciated movie.