Daily Real Estate News  |  October 27, 2009  |   Stemming the Wave of Foreclosures
By the time real estate practitioner Jeff Schrager got the call from a fellow church member about disabled home owner Douglas Berard and his looming foreclosure, it was too late to save Berard’s home. But it wasn’t too late for Schrager, president of Realty Blue Inc., in Fresno, Calif., to make a huge impact on Berard’s life.

The victim of a predatory lender, Berard was facing foreclosure and had given up hope that he would recover from the host of maladies that afflicted him. Until Schrager stepped in. “The day I met Jeff, he pulled every penny out of his pocket and gave it to me. He got me a new wheelchair [his was stolen], he fixed my glasses, he gave me a cell phone so I could contact him, and hooked me up with a man who rented me a room,” says Berard, who was living in his driveway because his electricity and water had been shut off.

That was almost three years ago. Today, Berard rents a house, has reconnected with his family and is about six months away from buying a home and has his own graphic design business. “Jeff is more than just a real estate pro, he’s like my brother. He’s one of three people who rekindled my faith in mankind,” says Berard.

Schrager is one of 10 finalists for the Good Neighbor Awards, a grant program recognizing REALTORSŪ who make exceptional volunteer contributions to their communities. Each week, until the five winners are announced in November, we’ll bring you the story of one of these finalists.

"I Wanted to Serve Others"
As a real estate salesperson entrenched in the industry, Schrager recognized the seriousness of the impending foreclosure crisis several years before it made such an impact on the industry. “A lot of people would call my office needing to sell because of a potential foreclosure situation. After 9/11, I re-evaluated what I wanted my real estate company to become. The bottom line: I wanted to serve others. I wanted to do good business and support charitable endeavors,” says Schrager.

The people calling Schrager’s office needed more than someone to sell their homes; they needed guidance. “I realized that some of them could save their homes if they just knew where to look, so I became something of a solution source,” he says. Schrager, who was director of the Community Housing Council of Fresno at the time, decided that a more structured set up was needed. Thus was born the “No Homeowner Left Behind” foundation.

The Foundation, which was funded through grants to the Community Housing Council of Fresno, is a non-profit corporation that promotes local grassroots foreclosure prevention initiatives. “There were government, legal, non-profit, and other resources out there but we needed to string those resources together. We needed a network,” he says. “We couldn’t wait for the Calvary to ride in and save us. We wanted to be proactive and help homeowners in need.”

Once Schrager had a network of resources in place, he set about training housing professionals who wanted to volunteer. He personally trained more than 300 housing professionals through a six-hour class that he wrote. The training is free. “I set up a phone network. Volunteers from different sectors of the housing industry were set up to take calls and offer housing crisis counseling from their homes,” he says. These volunteers manned phone lines and attended community events held to educate homeowners on loan modifications and other available resources. “Not everyone called to get advice on saving a home,” says Schrager. “If we can help someone get free groceries, we’ll do that too.”

No Home Owner Left Behind
“Our area was ground zero for foreclosures,” says Dawn Golik, office of field policy and management, U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), in Fresno. “Jeff recognized that and approached our office to pull together a partnership,” she says. “Because of Jeff, hundreds of industry professionals were able to get training on the foreclosure process. They learned how to become advocates for those facing foreclosure.”

“My first goal in counseling anyone is to preserve homeownership. If we truly want to turn the industry around, we have to help those who can stay in their homes. If that’s not possible, then I want to preserve equity and minimize the adverse effects of losing a home. I want homeowners to have reputable, unbiased information.” Information, he says, is the key to being able to save yourself. “We want to give home owners the ability to help themselves, but if we need to make those 10 hours worth of calls to help someone get a loan modification, then we’ll do it.”

As a result of the free foreclosure counseling services offered through the hotline and through local events, the Community Housing Council, which serves as a hub for the No Homeowner Left Behind Foundation, has grown to be a National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling grantee. “By documenting our assistance and help, we became a full HUD-approved counseling agency and a model for other agencies that want to provide the same services,” he says. Because of this, Schrager, who wrote the grants that resulted in more than $600,000 in funding, needed even more help. So he set up a counselor-training program that teaches volunteers how to train housing professionals about the foreclosure process.

Schrager still answers hotline calls, but he’s focused more than ever on educating housing professionals. “Not all areas of the Valley are covered by HUD-approved counseling agencies. So I provide team building and community support to other areas. I share with them—for free—the how-to manual I wrote so they know the steps to take to get HUD approval.” To date, Schrager has helped set up four different chapters of No Homeowner Left Behind and offers a free tool kit to anyone interested in creating their own chapter.

Empowering Individuals Through Grassroots Efforts
Although Schrager has no way to track just how many families have been helped through No Homeowner Left Behind, he says that the hotline fields more than 2,000 calls a year. “We also serve at least 500 people annually at multiple local events, so that’s at least 5,000 families [or individuals] in Fresno over the past two years alone, if not more,” he says. “It’s a real grassroots organization that is about empowering individuals. I want to help other cities get their local resources networked together and their service providers more funding, especially grants and assistance in getting HUD-approval for delinquency and default counseling.”

Sound like a lot of work? Consider this: Schrager is also a pilot for a major airline who’s done mission work building homes in areas such as Grenada and El Salvador and runs a successful real estate brokerage. “It’s remarkable the amount of work he does,” says Golik. “And that speaks volumes about him as a person.”

Schrager sums it up best. “We have to turn off the tap on the foreclosure problem. The more help we pump into the community, the more houses we save, the quicker the real estate recovery will happen. I want to give others a way to serve locally. One person can make a huge difference.”

Of the 10 Good Neighbor finalists, five winners will receive $10,000 grants for their community projects and will be honored at the REALTORSŪ Conference & Expo in San Diego on November 14. The remaining five finalists will receive $2,500 grants for their cause. To learn about the other finalists, go to REALTOR.org/GNA.

The Good Neighbor Awards is supported by eNeighborhoods, Homes.com, Lowe’s and HouseLogic.

-- Tracey C. Velt
Contact Schrager at jeffs@teamrealtyblue.com or www.teamrealtyblue.com. Learn more about the Community Housing Council of Fresno at www.chcfresno.org.