It was Valentine’s Day morning and Greg Corbin was fresh off a breakup that he may have manifested.
The split wasn’t romantic; rather, the bankruptcy-and-foreclosure specialist at the bow of Northgate Real Estate Group had lost out on a monster deal with an important lender on a big Manhattan asset. The commission would have been eye-popping, he said, declining to wade into the weeds.
The worst part is he saw the flop coming; he just couldn’t stop it.
“I was placing way too much emphasis on: ‘What if this falls apart?’” Corbin said on a phone call moments after the bust, noting he’d spent the night before and that morning meditating on a good outcome.
“But I couldn’t get there; it wasn’t real to me,” he said.
Corbin, a believer in the mind’s power to affect reality, resolved to take his cues from the universe for the rest of that Friday. He would wrap up his work at home, on his own — no calls — “because whatever energy [I] put out there is going to suck,” he said.
This kind of heartbreak is an anomaly for Corbin.
By the numbers, he has emerged as one of the biggest winners of the commercial real estate downturn.
Northgate recently ranked first in New York City and third nationally in BankruptcyData’s count of top bankruptcy, foreclosure and restructuring brokerages. Corbin’s firm did $625 million in distressed sales and workouts last year and has finalized $3.4 billion, all told.
Unofficially, Corbin is the city’s uncontested “bankruptcy guy.”
“Basically everyone aware of him in the New York City area has retained him,” Paul Rubin, a bankruptcy attorney, said.
Corbin launched the city’s first in-house bankruptcy and restructuring division the same month the 2019 rent law effectively sentenced rent-stabilized buildings to secular decline. He opened his own shop in mid-2023 as that distress began to hit the courts in force.
In the first half of 2024, real estate bankruptcies in Brooklyn and Queens accounted for nearly half of all filings in the associated Eastern District of New York, compared to a national average of 10 percent, according to American Bankruptcy Institute data reported by Bloomberg Law. Rent-stabilized filings, in large part, drove the boroughs’ outsized share.
And in the past few months, Corbin has been on the bleeding edge of a paradigm shift set to boost his market share just as New York’s distress story enters its second act.
Classically, borrowers have wielded bankruptcy as either leverage or a lifeline — a filing instantly blocks a foreclosure (and enrages creditors).
Now, the money people see promise in the courts’ fix-it powers, too.
“Lenders are not only unthreatened by bankruptcy, many of them welcome it,” Corbin said.
Across the board, interest rates are still high, mortgages are maturing and lenders are seeking solutions beyond extend and pretend or foreclosure, particularly for rent-stabilized deals devalued by the rent legislation’s de facto cap on revenues.
But the banks and private shops exposed to the asset class do not want to own those buildings and they are overeager to get the assets’ “toxic” debt off their books for the most the market will pay.
Bankruptcy is set up to do that — and then some. It typically produces a cleaner title and higher bids than foreclosure does, in a fraction of the time and, in the case of Corbin’s clients, the headache. The bankruptcies he’s putting together are consensual, pre-arranged.
“Everyone holds hands and marches into court,” Corbin said. He expects more of those deals will come in 2025.
From the outside, it looks like a case of being in the right place at the right time.
But Corbin doesn’t subscribe to the idea of the happy accident. Over the last two decades, he has mentally designed a life where deals got done — past tense — and that’s why they have.
“My perception is you can really create that, you can write the outcome of your life,” he said.
“The bankruptcy guy”
Corbin isn’t just “the bankruptcy guy,” he’s the golden child of distressed real estate.
“Greg: He’s an amazing guy, let me tell you,” one rent-stabilized landlord for whom Corbin has modified loans and offloaded buildings said, speaking anonymously given the contention around the asset class.
“Do you have a newspaper big enough?” restructuring specialist David Goldwasser asked when he heard The Real Deal would be profiling Corbin. If this print edition isn’t, no publication is.
When any business figure is showered with praise, it raises a skeptic’s brow. Journalists are innate skeptics. And Corbin gets a lot of praise.
But most of it centers on his penchant for hard work, which verges on obsessive — his words. And the proof is in the pudding — his record-smashing deal numbers and corner office two floors from the top of Paramount Plaza at 1633 Broadway.
As an investment sales broker starting out on the eve of the Great Recession, Corbin carved out his distressed niche by saying yes to what came across his desk. An attorney asked him to sell an asset in bankruptcy. He taught himself the basics, got a good price, did a few more deals and boom — he’s the bankruptcy guy.
“That’s how thoughts become reality, and perception becomes: you’re that guy,” he said.
In 2019, he moved to Aaron Jungreis’ Rosewood Realty Group to head a bankruptcy and restructuring division on the hunch that 10 years into an upcycle, a downturn was coming.
“Everyone holds hands and marches into court.”
Then came the rent law, Covid’s hit to office occupancy and the surge in interest rates.
“It sounds perverse, but it couldn’t have been better,” he said.
A little over a year into the Federal Reserve’s hiking cycle, and four into the slow-moving rent-stabilized trainwreck, Corbin opened Northgate with his four-person team from Rosewood. In the past 18 months, business has boomed, word of his work ethic has spread and his team has sprouted.
“Greg is motivated, he is thorough, he is convincing and a great salesman and marketer,” bankruptcy attorney Jonathan Pasternak said.
“I send him a draft at 1 o’clock in the morning, he’ll reply,” Rubin added. “I’m not exaggerating.”
He’s not. Corbin barely sleeps. He kept our in-person interview on a stormy December morning despite pulling two consecutive near all-nighters from which he showed no signs of exhaustion.
At 52, he is composed and clean-cut: balding, but shaved; thin and fit. His personal style leans minimalist. He drinks one coffee daily, then switches to chamomile tea. He meditates each morning. And he is incredibly tuned in.
He started our conversation by asking me questions. He wanted to feel out the interview process before it began.
That type of personality — purposeful, confident, empathetic — inspires trust. And trust is what has convinced a growing crop of lenders that a pre-arranged bankruptcy might be the best way to rid themselves of that pesky, “toxic” rent-stabilized debt.
“A lot of it is sales,” Corbin said. “People, if they know you and like your reputation [will want to work with you].”
Irreconcilable differences
Pre-negotiated bankruptcy — not quite pre-packaged, as not all creditors are involved, yet pre-determined enough to fit Corbin’s philosophy — isn’t new. But insiders say demand for consensual Chapter 11s, particularly for lenders to rent-regulated assets, is trending up.
“It’s always been [a thing], but now there’s just a plethora,” Goldwasser said.
“Lenders were allergic to bankruptcy before; they weren’t familiar with how it was run,” Corbin said. “Now, they realize it can produce a much better outcome.”
When a property goes into bankruptcy, any liens, litigation or other encumbrances are wiped. A clear deed invites higher bids, which is a big benefit to lenders to rent-regulated buildings, as most in distress are also underwater.
It’s faster than foreclosure: four months compared to one-to-five years. That’s a cash saver and headache prophylactic. It eliminates city and state transfer taxes, which “can be a significant chunk of money given the size of your loan,” Rubin said.
And in perhaps the most clear-cut benefit, it lets lenders unload underwater deals at some of the best prices the market will offer — a capitalist cure to a socialist-designed state of play.
New York foreclosures, these days, are mostly resolving through credit bids: No third parties show at auctions, so lenders take back the assets. If bidders do appear, they’re often bottom feeders, Corbin said. That crew isn’t likely to pay the loan amount or anything close.
Bankruptcy, by contrast, is handled by the federal courts, and a sale must maximize an asset’s value. Bankruptcy law requires an intensive marketing process and for bidders to financially qualify for auction.
Corbin’s marketing is famously top-notch: 50-page reports, email blasts that reach 93,000 and building walk-throughs that can draw dozens of investors. The process typically produces bidders serious enough to play ball at auction where friendly competition induces better offers.
Even in the best possible outcome for a rent-stabilized deal, a winning bid is unlikely to cover the loan amount. But the pre-arrangements Corbin specializes in account for that.
“There’s a backstop,” he said.
Say the loan is $25 million, but the bank thinks the building is only worth $18 million.
Corbin will usher through a deal where the lender knocks a few million off the debt if the borrower puts some money in escrow to cover what the sale may not — $1 million, in this example.
“That way the bank or the lender feels that they’re protected even on the downside,” he said.
If the building only fetches $15 million, the debtor is still responsible for the full $3 million needed to hit the agreed-upon sale price (so, the $1 million in escrow plus another $2 million out of pocket).
But at least he’s not on the hook for $10 million.
On those types of workouts, Corbin makes his money on what he or his brokers save the client.
If the lender agrees to take $18 million, for example, Northgate would take a cut of that $7 million the borrower did not have to pay.
On straight-up sales, Northgate makes commission on the auction price. Either way, if Corbin can pull higher bids, everyone — lender, borrower, broker — goes home happy.
(As for the new buyer, jury’s out on whether he can make the math work at $18 million.)
Corbin said the lender-led bankruptcy trend is nascent — “It’s only a few lenders” — but growing.
“Not only have they warmed up, some lenders that we’ve sold properties for in bankruptcy have said to us, ‘We have these other borrowers; do you think you could convince them that this is the route to go?’” he said.
Trust fall
Among rent-stabilized borrowers, bankruptcy is still very much taboo, even as a last resort.
“Thank goodness I don’t know that much about it,” the landlord for whom Corbin has done multiple rent-regulated workouts said. “I hope I never find out.”
“It’s considered a third rail by owners,” said another rent-stabilized owner who has lost dozens of properties to foreclosure.
Commercial real estate mortgages are typically non-recourse, meaning a lender cannot go after a borrower personally if the borrower fails to repay his debt. The lender can only take the property.
But a bankruptcy filing triggers recourse provisions. That can be particularly frightening when a building is worth less than the debt. If a bankruptcy sale does not cover the loan amount, the borrower must cover the deficiency.
“If we had filed bankruptcy, then the lender would have sued me personally for repayment,” the landlord who has weathered multiple foreclosures said.
The consensual bankruptcies Corbin is doing are different.
“[Bankruptcy is] considered a third rail by owners.”
Lenders are offering to waive those recourse obligations and settle on a lower, agreed-upon loan amount still due with the understanding the borrower will participate in good faith.
Getting both sides to agree to those terms can be a feat.
“A lot of lenders find borrowers pugilistic,” Corbin said. “And we’re arriving to the scene late so frustration builds up with the borrower at this point.”
“We’re trying to come in as a neutral party to cool down the situation,” he said.
Corbin’s job is to mediate, but calm is a tough vibe to curate when money, assets and in some cases, livelihoods, are on the line. There are many cooks in the distressed-debt kitchen from special servicers to receivers to managing agents and lawyers. They have competing agendas.
Corbin has to guide them and leave them feeling cared for so they’ll tell their friends, colleagues and family members that Northgate is the group they want when things get tough.
Serenity — unsurprisingly, perhaps — does not come naturally to a workaholic perfectionist juggling an expanding business while sustaining a marriage and raising three daughters, two of them teens.
“My name is on the door,” he said. “I want to make sure everything that goes out is perfect.”
Meditation is a help, but it’s just a piece of a wider wellness regime Corbin has subscribed to for decades. The broker is a big believer in the doctrine of Dr. Joe Dispenza, a chiropractor and alternative medicine guru who teaches the mind’s power to heal the body and hosts week-long retreats popular with the corporate crowd.
Dispenza links the phenomenon to quantum physics, arguing that humans can manipulate energy to create the reality they want. Dispenza figured this out when he broke his back, and doctors told him he may never walk again. Instead of opting for surgery for the pain, he imagined his back healed. It worked, he claims, and his followers, which stretch into the millions on social media, believe him.
“It’s not just about hoping or wishing,” Corbin said. “It’s about training your brain and body to experience it as if it’s already happened; that’s how real change occurs.”
Researchers have questioned those claims, and criticized Dispenza’s work as pseudoscience. Corbin acknowledges the doubters, but his faith is unwavering.
In 2015, he started the Give to Give Foundation, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to attend Dispenza’s workshops and seminars, which can run in the thousands of dollars. His father and his friend Rose Cailoa of Bettina Equities helped him incorporate the organization, which raised about $2 million annually between 2021 and 2023, according to the most recent data on ProPublica.
Corbin said Give to Give has since helped thousands, including incarcerated people, veterans dealing with PTSD and others struggling with their mental or physical health.
The broker credits Dispenza’s techniques with shaping his life and his sense of self. He could do his job without those interventions, but he knows he wouldn’t be as good at it.
“It’s getting mentally aligned from situations like this,” he said after the Valentine’s Day debacle. “I’m going to go home and get it together, get back to balance and stasis.”
Profiting off distress
You might think Corbin, an empath, would feel bad thriving off other’s hard times.
But he sees goodwill in his work. Corbin is there for borrowers, some of them mom-and-pop landlords beside themselves over potentially losing property their family has owned for generations.
“What many people don’t realize is that the toll extends far beyond that moment,” Corbin said.
“It’s not just the immediate financial loss; it’s the ongoing strain of thinking they may never truly escape it,” he added, alluding to the recourse provisions that can haunt a sponsor after foreclosure.
Northgate’s job is to chart a path out that helps the borrower, satisfies the lender and addresses the rancor on both sides: It’s almost altruism.
I asked if Corbin ever felt like a therapist.
“A lot of the time,” he said.
In the long run, Corbin’s work may benefit the rent-regulated stock that’s driving the bulk of his business.
As it stands, each bankruptcy auction is price discovery for a sector that hasn’t seen much sale volume since the rent law decimated values. When buildings trade at steep discounts, it creates comps, which will ultimately devalue the asset class at large.
That macro mark-to-market will mean bigger losses for banks, lower sale prices at auction and lower commissions for Northgate.
“It kind of doesn’t benefit anybody, right?” Corbin said. (On the other hand, if distress proliferates, it would bring the firm more business.)
Another exception: Winning bidders on rent-stabilized bankruptcy sales could come in at a better basis and have a longer runway to float the property. Most buying rent-regulated these days just want to make a modest profit until the legislation, they hope, changes.
But if Northgate’s work exacerbates overall rent-stabilized distress while fixing individual buildings’ problems, that could make something happen in Albany — the outcome much of the industry, and certainly the buyers, are putting their energy behind.
“I think it’s a possibility,” Corbin said. “Sometimes it takes the pendulum swinging too far in one direction to wake people up.”