When loans go sideways, a senior hand to sort them out.
CtrlCap is a solo advisory practice for lending teams. Fifteen years in lending, origination through servicing, now focused on the hard files and the operations behind them.
Fractional, on retainer·Senior and hands-on, no bench·Phoenix, AZ
Four places a troubled loan gets worse.
The same four, at almost every lender, usually at the moment the book outgrows the people who built it.
The default notice goes out, and then nothing
A loan matures or misses a payment, the letter goes out, and the file waits. Nobody owns the next step, so the borrower sets the pace. Every week without a plan costs interest, equity, and leverage you will want later.
The file lives in three inboxes
Payoff demands, borrower promises, inspection photos, and counsel's advice sit in email threads held by whoever happened to be on them. When a dispute, a bankruptcy, or an investor question arrives, the record has to be rebuilt from memory.
Investors hear about it last
The watch list is a spreadsheet, the status is in someone's head, and the capital partner finds out a loan is in trouble from the quarterly report. That is the conversation that costs a fund its next raise.
Servicing was built for loans that perform
Payments, draws, and payoffs run fine. Extensions, forbearance, modifications, and foreclosure do not, because the process was never written for them. So each one is handled from scratch, by the most senior person available, at the worst possible time.
A troubled loan is not a legal problem yet. It is an operations problem with a clock on it.
Three pieces of work, for the loans that need a senior hand.
Each one can stand alone. Most engagements start with the first and end with the third.
Portfolio triage and loan-by-loan review
Every loan on the watch list gets the same look: where it stands, what the collateral is worth today, what the documents allow, and which path, from cure to foreclosure, protects the most value. You get a ranked list and a plan for each file, not a memo.
- Watch-list review against documents, payment history, and current collateral value
- A recommended path per loan: cure, extension, forbearance, modification, payoff, or enforcement
- Exposure summary by borrower, asset type, and maturity
- The gaps in the file that have to be closed before any path is safe to take
Workout and restructuring plans
Once the path is chosen, I run it or help your team run it, in your name and inside your servicing: the borrower conversation, the terms, the paper, and the cadence. Firm, fair, and documented, because the file you build during a workout is the file you will stand on if it fails.
- Forbearance, extension, and modification terms sized to what the collateral and the borrower can actually carry
- Borrower communication that is direct, on a schedule, and written down
- Coordination with counsel, trustees, receivers, and brokers through foreclosure and REO
- A decision record for every file: what was offered, what was accepted, and why
Servicing setup and operations
A troubled-loan desk your team can run after I leave: who does what, in what order, on what timeline, with reporting your investors and your credit committee can read before they ask. Built inside the servicing platform you already have.
- Default, maturity, and watch-list procedures with owners and clocks
- Queues for extensions, forbearance, modifications, payoffs, and foreclosure, with aging and escalation
- Investor and committee reporting on specials that assembles itself from the file
- Cleanup of the servicing operation underneath: payoffs, extensions, and reconciliations that have drifted
Before
After
Fractional, senior, and inside your systems.
A monthly retainer for a set number of hours, agreed up front and reviewed monthly. The scope is written down before anything starts, and it changes only when we both decide it should.
Triage
Every file on the watch list, read against its documents and its numbers. You get the ranked list and a recommended path per loan whether or not we go further.
Plan
Terms, sequence, and owners for each file, agreed with you and your counsel. The process for the desk is written at the same time, so the second troubled loan is easier than the first.
Run
Borrower contact in the lender's name, paper, counsel and trustee coordination, and reporting, on a cadence. Your investors and your committee see status every month, not when something breaks.
Hand back
The desk, the procedures, and the reporting stay with your team, documented. If you want me on call afterward, that is a choice you make, never a dependency built in.
Senior time, on terms you can read in a minute.
Engagements are sized to the book: a handful of troubled loans and a desk to set up is a different retainer from a full portfolio review. Hours and rate are agreed before the first file is opened, and most engagements run three to six months.
Your data stays in your systems. I work inside your servicing platform, your document store, and your reporting, with the access the work needs and nothing more.
Strict confidentiality, in writing, including the borrowers' and your investors' information. No bench, no junior staff, no scope you find out about on an invoice.
Built in the operating seat, not from a playbook.
Fifteen years of doing the work before advising on it.
Fifteen years inside lending operations: loan servicing, asset management, workout, fund control, and secondary-market loan sales across residential transition, fix-and-flip, DSCR, and construction product. I joined a lender as its founding-team SVP and was there from two people to roughly $300 million in assets under management, which means I have handled the defaults, the extensions, the forbearances, and the foreclosures that come with that growth, on portfolios I was accountable for.
Part of that record is a servicing-operations rebuild from the same seat: fund control taken off spreadsheets, reimbursement from seven days to two, reconciliation errors gone. The honest version of a track record is the work itself, and I am glad to walk through it on a call.
What people ask first.
Both, within your own servicing. I never take a loan over: it stays with you and your servicer of record, and everything I do happens inside your servicing, in your name, alongside your team. For some clients that means handling the day-to-day on the troubled files: the file, the borrower contact, the plan, and the reporting. For others it means reviewing the book, writing the workout plan for each loan, and setting up the process so your team runs it. Either way the scope is agreed in writing before the work starts, and it can move from one to the other as the book changes.
Real estate debt, mostly: residential transition and fix-and-flip loans, DSCR rental loans, bridge and construction loans, and small-balance commercial. The work has the same shape across all of them. Find the facts, decide the path, document it, and keep every party on a cadence.
No. CtrlCap is an advisory practice. I work alongside your counsel, your trustees, your servicer of record, and your accounting, and I do not give legal advice. Where a state requires a licensed servicer to perform an act, that act stays with the licensed party. What I bring is the operating judgment about which path to take and the discipline to run it.
In your systems. I work inside your servicing platform, your document store, and your reporting, under an account with the access the work requires and nothing beyond it, and that access ends with the engagement. Nothing is copied out to run elsewhere. Confidentiality is in the engagement letter and it covers your borrowers' and your investors' information, not only yours.
I do. CtrlCap is a solo practice by design. There is no account manager between you and the person handling your files, and no junior consultant learning lending on your budget. The tradeoff is a limited number of engagements at a time, which is why they are sized by the hour and reviewed monthly.
A monthly retainer for a set number of hours. Most engagements run three to six months: a few weeks of triage and planning, then the desk running on a cadence until the files are resolved and your team can carry the process. Month to month after the initial term, and you can end it with notice at any point.
The desk stays with you: the procedures, the queues, the reporting, and a decision record on every file, documented so your team can run it without calling anyone. If you want me on call for the next one, that is a choice you make, never a dependency designed in.
Tell me what is on your watch list.
A short call, no deck. If CtrlCap is not the right fit, you will hear that on the call.
Or reach me directly.
Spencer Medrano, founder. Fifteen years in lending, origination through servicing. Read the background →