Bagel business left hole in budget
BY LORE CROGHAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER
Monday, February 11th 2008, 4:00 AM
Oates for News
Richard Snyder and Gina Celia refinanced their Staten Island house to help buy a bagel shop.
Oates for News
The bagel shop's failure means the couple could lose their home.
The trouble started after Richard Snyder and Gina Celia refinanced their Staten Island home to get cash to buy a bagel shop.
Sales were disappointing. Snyder confronted reality and closed the business. His entrepreneurial effort ended, Snyder returned to a job driving trucks at construction sites.
"I went out of my field," he said. "I should have stuck with trucking."
The couple refinanced again, making a risky choice — the low initial rate on one of two mortgages ended even before the first monthly payment was due. The unpaid principal keeps growing, and they can't keep up.
"We're resigned to the fact this house could be auctioned," said Snyder, 46, sitting in their kitchen of their two-family house on Edgegrove Ave. in Annadale. They're not alone.
More than 27,000 city homeowners received foreclosure-related notices last year, up 12% from 2006, according to real estate Web site RealtyTrac.
Some beleaguered borrowers knowingly took risky loans, intent on trying to refinance before payments became unaffordable. Others, like Celia, 38, insist they wound up with financially crippling mortgages because they didn't sufficiently educate themselves about their repayment responsibilities.
Celia and her husband admitted they didn't read enough of the documents that were part of the two Countrywide mortgages she signed in November 2005. "The stack of papers was the size of a telephone book," Snyder said. They also did not have their own lawyer.
The couple now claims Lillian Vinci, a senior loan officer at Monarch Mortgage Services in Midland Beach, Staten Island, told them their $512,000 mortgage had an initial interest rate of 1.5% that would remain fixed for a year, and that there would be no unpaid balance added to the loan principal. Neither was true. They also claim she told them the rate on their second mortgage, for $64,000, would be 6.5%; it's 8.75%.
But Vinci insisted she provided accurate information. "I'm certain I wouldn't have lied to a customer," she said.
Besides, she said, before the closing, the couple received disclosure forms from both Monarch and Countrywide spelling out the loans' rates and terms.
"Nobody misled them," said Vinci, who no longer works as a mortgage broker. Monarch's Midland Ave. office closed more than a year ago, though the brokerage's name is still on the outside of the building.
Richard Snyder and Gina Celia refinanced their Staten Island house to help buy a bagel shop.
The bagel shop's failure means the couple could lose their home.
BY LORE CROGHAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER
Monday, February 11th 2008, 4:00 AM
Oates for News
Richard Snyder and Gina Celia refinanced their Staten Island house to help buy a bagel shop.
Oates for News
The bagel shop's failure means the couple could lose their home.
The trouble started after Richard Snyder and Gina Celia refinanced their Staten Island home to get cash to buy a bagel shop.
Sales were disappointing. Snyder confronted reality and closed the business. His entrepreneurial effort ended, Snyder returned to a job driving trucks at construction sites.
"I went out of my field," he said. "I should have stuck with trucking."
The couple refinanced again, making a risky choice — the low initial rate on one of two mortgages ended even before the first monthly payment was due. The unpaid principal keeps growing, and they can't keep up.
"We're resigned to the fact this house could be auctioned," said Snyder, 46, sitting in their kitchen of their two-family house on Edgegrove Ave. in Annadale. They're not alone.
More than 27,000 city homeowners received foreclosure-related notices last year, up 12% from 2006, according to real estate Web site RealtyTrac.
Some beleaguered borrowers knowingly took risky loans, intent on trying to refinance before payments became unaffordable. Others, like Celia, 38, insist they wound up with financially crippling mortgages because they didn't sufficiently educate themselves about their repayment responsibilities.
Celia and her husband admitted they didn't read enough of the documents that were part of the two Countrywide mortgages she signed in November 2005. "The stack of papers was the size of a telephone book," Snyder said. They also did not have their own lawyer.
The couple now claims Lillian Vinci, a senior loan officer at Monarch Mortgage Services in Midland Beach, Staten Island, told them their $512,000 mortgage had an initial interest rate of 1.5% that would remain fixed for a year, and that there would be no unpaid balance added to the loan principal. Neither was true. They also claim she told them the rate on their second mortgage, for $64,000, would be 6.5%; it's 8.75%.
But Vinci insisted she provided accurate information. "I'm certain I wouldn't have lied to a customer," she said.
Besides, she said, before the closing, the couple received disclosure forms from both Monarch and Countrywide spelling out the loans' rates and terms.
"Nobody misled them," said Vinci, who no longer works as a mortgage broker. Monarch's Midland Ave. office closed more than a year ago, though the brokerage's name is still on the outside of the building.
