Portuguese-speaking Realtors on Cape Cod used to keep busy helping an influx of Brazilians who were seeking homes.
These days, more and more of them are working with Brazilian homeowners to sell properties they can’t afford.
“It’s sad and it’s frustrating. Most people don’t want this to happen to them,” said Cristina Junqueira, an agent with HomeSource Realty Group in Hyannis.
Junqueira, who is fluent in Portuguese, is marketing the homes of about a dozen Brazilians who are at risk of foreclosure. In the last six months, she’s heard from about 35 others who sought her assistance because they couldn’t continue their mortgage payments. Some of them say, “I want to return the house to the bank,” she said.
Realtors like Junqueira and foreclosure prevention counselors are scrambling to help desperate homeowners as foreclosure activity on the Cape has surged.
Lenders filed 1,488 petitions to foreclose in Barnstable County last year, more than triple the number in 2005. In the town of Barnstable, there were 487 foreclosure petitions. That’s a 283 percent jump from 2005 when 127 petitions were filed, according to statistics from The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman.
Some say a significant portion of those foreclosure actions involve Brazilians who obtained adjustable-rate or interest-only loans without fully understanding the risks and terms of such mortgages. One housing group estimates that as many as 12 percent of the homeowners seeking foreclosure prevention assistance are Brazilian.
“Some people that I come across don’t speak a word of English, and here they are signing a document that’s in a language that they really don’t understand,” said Mariana Costa, an agent in the South Yarmouth office of Kinlin Grover GMAC. Costa estimated that about a dozen Brazilian homeowners have contacted her in the last six months trying to sell homes because they can’t afford ballooning mortgage payments.
Over the last decade, the number of Brazilian-born residents on Cape Cod grew. Many were drawn to the region by friends and family who had already settled there, and they filled service-sector jobs – cleaning homes, landscaping yards, or working at restaurants.
Real estate agents and mortgage brokers, aware of the trend and trying to tap into the market, learned Portuguese and became more attuned to the needs of Brazilian home seekers. But some of those Brazilians, hungry to own a home, couldn’t document their incomes and had trouble securing conventional financing.
Foreclosure prevention counselors say unscrupulous brokers preyed on those home seekers and encouraged them to obtain stated-income loans and adjustable-rate mortgages that they couldn’t afford.
“It was so easy for them to get a mortgage,” said Junqueira.
Costa added, “There are brokers out there that did take advantage and it’s sad because they work very hard for their money.”
About three months ago, Costa said, she met with a man who had purchased a three-bedroom ranch on Linden Street in Hyannis for $375,000. The homeowner, who bought the home just four months earlier with no money down, wanted to sell because he couldn’t meet the monthly payments.
“I was able to speak to him to tell him I couldn’t get $240,000 for that house,” she said.
‘Fundamental’ Action
Pamela Parker, a foreclosure prevention counselor with Housing Assistance Corp. in Hyannis, has been hearing from Brazilians facing similar situations.
Parker said some of the homeowners she encountered didn’t realize what type of loan product they were obtaining.
“The thing I’m most concerned about is that they do get into predatory loans and anyone can come into this country, with a visa, without a visa, and anybody can get a mortgage of any kind. Many times these mortgages were given to them without the benefit of an interpreter, without the benefit of an attorney,” said Parker.
Parker added, “It’s hard enough for an English-speaking person to understand what their mortgage documents say, never mind a Portuguese-speaking person.”
Anywhere from 10 percent to 12 percent of the homeowners who are currently seeking assistance at HAC are Brazilian, according to Parker. She said she expects that number to increase in coming weeks now that the group has hired a Portuguese-speaking interpreter to help.
Parker noted that HAC hired the interpreter after the woman sought guidance for her own housing situation. When a Brazilian couple who didn’t understand English well sought Parker’s help, she asked the woman to help interpret. Parker said she could see how relieved the couple was, especially the husband, when he could relate his problems to the interpreter.
“I could see so much of the anxiety drop away from him as he found someone who could speak the language. We recognized right then that this was going to be fundamental for us,” Parker said of hiring the interpreter.
Most of the pre-foreclosure and short sales with which Junqueira is involved revolve around homeowners who have variable-rate and 100 percent financing loans. She said many Brazilians thought they would be able to refinance their loans but with home prices declining, they haven’t been able to do so.
Junqueira’s office has handled about 15 short sales in the last few months. Short sales are transactions in which the lender agrees to accept less than is owed on the home.
Some Brazilians want to return to their native country because the economy there is stronger, Realtors say.
Junqueira has talked with homeowners who simply say they want “give the house back” to the bank without realizing the consequences of a foreclosure.
“They have the idea now that that’s all they have to do,” she said.
Six years ago, Junqueira was more involved in helping her buyer clients through the financing process. But over the last four years ago, mortgage companies serving Portuguese-speaking buyers started popping up and her involvement in the financing faded, she said.
“At least 50 percent of the time, they would come to me pre-approved,” she said.
