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20 The Exchange Brad Geisen is a 30-year veteran of the default real estate industry, having created or operated websites such as Foreclosure. com, HomePath.com, HomeSteps.com, TaxLiens.com, HUDHouses.com, and many more. He developed and ran a pilot program for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which became the highly effective HUD M&M Program that still operates today. In that pilot, Geisen created the first online offer management platform, which has become the industry standard used by Fannie Mae and others. He also created a national training and education platform for the GSEs to improve vendor performance and ensure compliance. He also developed the National Short Sale Platform, which Fannie Mae still uses today to facilitate fast, efficient approvals. Geisen previously spoke to the DS5: Inside the Industry webcast about bankruptcy trends as we head into 2021. is is an extended version of that video interview. What are you expecting as far as a surge in bankruptcies in 2021, with so many borrowers potentially reaching the end of forbearance plans? ere's been a lot of discussions around that. e big thing that we see is when you look at what we're predicting [for 2021], and compared to what happened in, let's say, 2007—in 2007, you had a lot of properties that had significant negative equity. When the market turns slightly, the only option for homeowners was foreclosure or short sale. In this situation, we have markets that still remain strong. Property values have gone up. We have a lot fewer properties with negative equity, percentage-wise, with all the ones that are in default. So that's a big difference. However, you have a lot of people that have been out of work and they've fallen behind in their other debts: consumer debt, car loans, school loan debt, credit cards. A lot of people been living off credit cards. ey burned through their savings. eir home is probably the least problem because they've actually had a forbearance, that forgiveness on their home, but they haven't had forgiveness on all their other debts. In a situation like that, bankruptcy now becomes a better alternative, or a smarter alternative, for many people. We're anticipating and predicting that the bankruptcies are going to surge because of that. What should mortgage servicers be doing to assist and work with struggling homeowners for whom bankruptcy may be a viable option? at's a good question, everyone's scurrying around trying to figure out and get prepared. We started BK Global five years ago, but we've been in this industry more than three decades. We always looked at bankruptcy as a black hole, and I think everybody did. We started BK Global to come up with better methods of mitigation and bankruptcy. When we first [entered this space], what we saw was a couple of things. We saw debtors that filed bankruptcy, who either settled their debts or renegotiate their debts and hopefully get a fresh start. But what servicers typically would do is, they would file a motion for relief to get out Brad Geisen CEO, BK Global Get to Know Industry Executives Beyond the Boardroom "The first thing that we did is we put together a program where we bridged the gap between trustees and servicers. What's ironic is their intentions and outcomes are really aligned. They were always fighting back and forth, but they want the same outcome."