LOGS Financial Services Expands into Subprime.

LOGS Financial Services, a default management and outsourcing provider, is expanding its portfolio of services beyond default management and into the subprime, chattel mortgage and other nontraditional loan products.

The chattel market, mostly manufactured housing, consists of property not attached to real estate.

Gerald Shapiro, chairman and CEO of LOGS, said the company is always developing new methods to serve its clients and increase the scope of its business. In addition to expanding into subprime and manufactured housing, LOGS is growing its default management business services to handle mixed collateral loans, home equity and other atypical financing arrangements. LOGS views these opportunities as appropriate hedges against the constant consolidation of the "A" paper mortgage market to a few extremely large national servicers.

LOGS has formed a subprime default management group in its outsourcing division. The new group includes the outsourcing of traditional subservicing of B&C credit quality loans with an emphasis on the manufactured housing market. LOGS has several key client relationships in the manufactured housing industry, and it recently entered into a contract to service delinquent loans in Baton Rouge, La., to complement the work already being done in its Northbrook, Ill., and Jacksonville, Fla., locations.

LOGS said that Michael Barron, the company's general counsel and former general counsel of The United Companies, was instrumental in identifying the need for diversification into this space.

"Losses in the manufactured housing market continue to rise to the point where fewer financing opportunities exist for the purchase of new units," he said. "This has resulted in higher pricing for these loans and, consequently, a higher default risk. By applying the process-driven structure of our outsourcing division to the management of these loans for our servicing clients, we are confident we can reduce the cost of liquidation while ensuring the ...