Brockhouse: Foreclosure suit a ‘mistake’
Greg Brockhouse — a former San Antonio mayoral candidate who has said he is weighing another run for the office or a City Council seat — called a lender’s move to foreclose on his far Northwest Side house a “mistake.”
Freedom Mortgage Corp. filed a petition for foreclosure against Brockhouse and his wife, Annalisa, in state District Court in San Antonio on Friday, alleging the couple owes it more than $500,000 on their house in the Steeple Brook neighborhood.
The lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed, Brockhouse said.
“I’m a little stunned that that got filed,” he said, adding he was unaware of the suit before a Express-news reporter told him about it. “It’s under a current review for a loan modification with Freedom Mortgage. I’m still waiting on approval. I’m in the middle of it right now.”
He blamed a “process breakdown” at Freedom Mortgage, saying the company did not review financial documents he had submitted as part of the loan modification.
The request and documents are now under an expedited review, Brockhouse said. He provided an audio recording of a phone call he said he had with a Freedom Mortgage representative Monday as proof. The representative said on the call that an underwriter would render a decision on the modification Thursday and advised Brockhouse to follow up with the company Friday.
Another run?
Brockhouse, 51, in an interview with the Express-news last week, said he was considering a run for mayor or the District 8 City Council seat in the May 2025 municipal election.
In an email Tuesday, however, he said he’s staying out of electoral politics.
“For the record, I am not running for office, nor am I forming or considering any review to do so,” he said. He described his main priorities as “family challenges” and “rebuilding businesses.”
He twice unsuccessfully attempted to unseat Mayor Ron Nirenberg, first in 2019 and again in 2021. Brockhouse served as District 6 councilman from 2017 to 2019.
Brockhouse and his family moved to District 8 in 2020. He and his wife purchased the Steeple Brook house for $528,360 and financed the entire purchase price with American Pacific Mortgage Corp., Bexar County property records show. The loan was assigned to Freedom Mortgage in May 2022.
In June, the Brockhouses obtained a junior VA loan on the house for just under $63,000.
The house is currently appraised by the Bexar Appraisal District at $730,200. Based on that figure, Brockhouse would have more than enough to repay both loans if he chose to sell the house.
COVID shutdowns
Brockhouse recently started a mattress and furniture business on the Northwest Side. He previously operated a janitorial business that he said employed 40 people, but it shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic.
“As countless families in San Antonio and across the country can relate to and sympathize with, COVID shutdowns cost me my janitorial business and completely upended my family’s financial security after I left politics,” he said in an email Tuesday.
He obtained a forbearance plan from Freedom Mortgage as a result of losing his business, he said. Under such a plan, a lender agrees to pause or reduce a struggling borrower’s payments instead of forcing the property into foreclosure. But a June letter from Freedom Mortgage to Brockhouse and attached to the lawsuit said the COVID-19 forbearance plan had expired.
In that letter, the Florida company notified Brockhouse that the home loan was in default after he missed payments from Feb. 1 to June 1. It gave him until July 17 to cure the default.
The default allegedly was not cured, prompting a Plano law firm representing the lender on Thursday to issue a notice of acceleration of the loan maturity.
“The cure process is a loan modification,” Brockhouse said, adding that it’s under the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “disaster modification” for veterans facing hardship due to the pandemic. A loan servicer can enter into a modification with a struggling borrower up to 18 months after May 11, 2023 — the date that marked the end of the COVID-19 national emergency.
Brockhouse, an Air Force veteran, said he applied for the loan modification on June 28.
“I was in the process when the loan servicer erred and forwarded the loan to foreclosure,” he said, adding that the Express-news’ reporting on it “seems like a wasteful personal attack.”
Freedom Mortgage sued the Brockhouses seeking either a court judgment allowing for either a nonjudicial foreclosure or a judicial foreclosure. If it’s the latter, the company seeks an order directing the sheriff to seize and sell the property to satisfy the loan debt.
A Freedom Mortgage spokeswoman and a lawyer representing the company did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Auto accident
A week before Freedom Mortgage sued, Brockhouse filed his own lawsuit seeking more than $1 million in damages over injuries he allegedly suffered in a July 12, 2022, car accident at the intersection of Lockhill-selma and De Zavala roads on the North Side.
Brockhouse accused defendant Oluchukwu Ofili of negligence for failing to yield the right of way while making a left turn, causing the collision. Brockhouse suffered “severe injuries and damages,” the suit says. He said he sustained a “really bad concussion” and needs surgery on his right hand.
Progressive County Mutual Insurance Co., Brockhouse’s auto insurer, also is a named defendant. Brockhouse’s lawsuit says Ofili doesn’t have sufficient insurance coverage to compensate him for his injuries and Progressive “has failed, despite requests,” to make him “whole from (his) insurance policy.” He is suing the insurer for breach of contract.
However, Brockhouse said his lawyer should have named Olifi’s insurer as a defendant, not his insurance company.