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84 ILLINOIS McCalla Raymer and Pierce & Associates Join Forces Two default servicing law firms, one headquartered in Chicago and the other in Atlanta, with a combined 75 years in business, have announced the combining of their firms to perform default servicing operations in five states. McCalla Raymer, LLC, which has been in business for 34 years and is based in Atlanta, and Pierce & Associates, P.C., which has been in business for 41 years and is based in Chicago, have combined into one entity that will be known as McCalla Raymer Pierce, LLC. e new combined firm will have offices in Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. "Once this combination was agreed upon, the due diligence and compliance issues were quickly resolved," said Marty Stone, Senior Managing Partner at McCalla Raymer. "e combining of Pierce & Associates and Mc- Calla Raymer has been a very collaborative venture. By fusing tradition with innovation, McCalla Raymer Pierce, LLC will raise its service level and success to new heights." McCalla Raymer and Pierce & Associ- ates have a long history of partnering together to bring innovation to the default servicing industry; two of the firms' original principals, Denis Pierce and Stan McCalla, are pioneers in the industry. According to Denis Pierce, the Senior Managing Attorney with Pierce & Associates, "We are extremely excited to announce the combining of McCalla Raymer, LLC with Pierce & Associates." e combined firm and its clients will benefit from enormous efficiencies in shared services and the technology that will be gained from the combining of the two firms. Accord- ing to the announcement, McCalla Raymer Pierce, LLC will uphold a commitment to "working the files" in the states where the properties are located, and file level operations and staffing will remain largely unchanged in all five states. e combined firm will focus its practice in residential and commercial real estate services that include foreclosure, title curative, bankruptcy, eviction, commercial origination and workout transactions, complex litigation, title curative litigation, and closing services (REO and retail). time a property remains vacant. Reducing the foreclosure timeline would cut down on problems presented by vacant properties such as the spreading of blight, lowering of property values, vandalism, squat- ters, and violent crime that these properties often attract. "I'm very pleased," said Ohio Rep. Cheryl Grossman, one of the sponsors of Ohio is ranked No. 2 in the nation as far as foreclo- sures, and this is going to create very positive solutions to problems that exist across our state. We heard examples of it taking up to three and a half years to take care of a blighted property. What happens in that scenario is any neighbors in that neighborhood that maintain their homes have to deal with a boarded-up home. It certainly decreases property values, and then crime occurs there on a very frequent basis." e less time a property stays vacant, the less it will deteriorate, which will improve the marketability of a property when it eventually goes up for sale, according to Robert Klein, Chairman of Ohio-based national property preservation company Safeguard Properties. "I think this bill is absolutely going to change the industry, because what this bill does is when a property goes vacant and is abandoned, instead of taking two years or three years for the property to go to foreclo- sure, it will allow the mortgage servicer to get possession of the property while it's still in decent shape," Klein said. "Maybe not the best of shape, but it's in decent shape, and will be able to market the property." e passage of the fast track foreclosure bill was nearly three years in the making. e idea for the bill was first proposed by Columbus City Attorney Rick Pfeiffer, and Ohio HB 223 was introduced to the Ohio Senate in June 2013 by Grossman, a Republican, and Ohio State Rep. Michael Curtin, a Democrat. e bill passed unanimously in the Ohio House in April 2014, but then an amended version of the bill failed to make it out of the Ohio State Senate Finance Committee when it was intro- duced there eight months later in December 2014. A new version of the bill, Ohio HB 134, was introduced early in 2015 by the same two joint sponsors, Grossman and Curtin. at bill passed by a vote of 88-0in the Ohio House of Representatives in November 2015, and took another six months to pass in the Senate. Five Star Institute President and CEO Ed Delgado, who called vacant and abandoned properties a "community crisis of national pro- portion," said of the Ohio fast track foreclosure legislation, "is bill will take steps to ensure that these magnets for crime will be more Both firms are a part of the Legal League 100, a Five Star Institute membership group created in 2007 made up of premier law firms working in financial service "We are extremely excited to announce the combining of McCalla Raymer, LLC with Pierce & Associates." —Denis Pierce, Pierce & Associates OHIO On the Fast Track at Last: Ohio Passes Foreclosure Bill e fast track foreclosure bill which would reduce foreclosure timelines from two to three years down to as low as six months has finally passed in the Ohio State Legislature. It took nearly three years and several re- writes and amendments, and it ultimately took being rolled into a larger bill, HB 390 (Sales tax-exempt sale of natural gas by municipal gas company), before it passed in the Ohio State Senate. As the problems caused by vacant and abandoned properties have gained national attention in the last couple of years, Ohio lawmakers have fought to pass this legislation, which would greatly reduce the amount of Minnesota www.MinnesotaREO.com 612-669-6324 952-829-2938 763-432-7640 612-821-7500 952-844-1511 763-533-9133 651-209-8444 507-424-6026 Bruce McAlpin Jeff Detloff Long H. Doan Maribel Garcia Garth Johnson Craig Murphy Michael Olsen Brian Rossow

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