More lenders are going to court to collect debts from Chris and Aneta Urban, whose South Side fix-and-flip business buckled last year as unpaid debts stacked up.
Newly filed lawsuits brought against the brother-and-sister builders by a fellow member of a local real estate training program are the latest in a string of disputes centered on the Urbans and dozens of their properties across Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, with more than 80 properties in foreclosure proceedings. Chris Urban’s former mentor, Andrew Holmes, is suing the siblings for fraud.
“He’s giving the same runaround, that they’re working with their attorney, that they’re trying to sell his bulk portfolio, and he wants to settle the balance owed,” Wendy Valencia, one of the individuals Chris Urban met and borrowed from through the Holmes network, said of the Urbans. “In reality, it’s not going to happen because [Chris Urban] is in foreclosure on all the properties, he’s just given out second mortgages like candy, and he doesn’t have equity.”
Starting in about 2019, the Urbans began buying and rehabbing homes in the South Side, selling some and later venturing into rentals. The Urbans had amassed a portfolio of more than 100 properties, along with a debt of more than $14 million, when they began to have trouble paying their debts, The Real Deal previously reported.
They borrowed money from fellow members of the Andrew Holmes Mastery Program, a real estate investment training program based in Lombard, as well as Chicago-based lender Renovo Financial.
Valencia is seeking to foreclose on three properties where she loaned the Urbans money that she says wasn’t paid back. Valencia has been in contact with other individual lenders who are planning to foreclose on the Urbans’ properties, and a group of lenders is considering a fraud lawsuit.
Valencia had been lending the Urbans money for their business since 2019, and for a long time she said the debts were being paid without issue. That changed in 2024, when they started to fall behind.
“He started to run behind on payments. Just started to get a little bit later and later,” Valencia said. “And it would always be just an excuse after another, just something would come up, but then he would send the payment.”
But in February, around the time Renovo launched foreclosure proceedings against dozens of the Urbans’ properties, Valencia said the operation fell apart and all payments stopped. Chris promised the individuals from the Andrew Holmes network that he would make good on his debts to them after he finished rehabs and sold his properties, Valencia said. But as time went on, Valencia said she lost faith that she would be repaid.
Chris Urban declined to comment on the ongoing disputes, saying he will resolve them “through the courts, not the media.”
Valencia is suing to foreclose on 8014 South Yates Boulevard, where she obtained a second lien in January. Valencia loaned the Urbans $170,000 for a property on South Aberdeen Street in 2024. When they started to fall behind on payments, Valencia said she accepted a short sale of the property and was given second lien positions on two other properties, including 8014 South Yates Boulevard, as collateral for the $80,000 the Urbans still owed her.
But that second position lien wasn’t recorded in public records for five months, and the Urbans never made payments on the loan, Valencia said. In April the Urbans gave the South Yates property up to the first lender, VC New Concept LLC, through a quit claim deed without a public record of Valencia’s second lien and without her knowledge, she said.
Valencia is now suing for foreclosure, arguing the property’s first mortgage and ownership merged when VC New Concept was given the real estate, giving her a first lien on the property. She is suing VC New Concept and Fidelity National Title Company, arguing they knew about the second position and the failure to record it harmed her.
VC New Concept is run by Valdy Biernacki, a real estate broker and investor in Palos Hills. Biernacki did not return a request for comment.
Valencia’s experience is shared by other private lenders who knew the Urbans through Holmes’ mastery program, she said, and other lenders are planning to foreclose on properties in the near future.
In cases with other investors, Valencia said Urban would do a short sale on properties to satisfy the first mortgage, selling them to another LLC he operates and taking out another private mortgage to fund the purchase. Property records show several instances in which one of the Urbans’ LLCs sold a property to Construction & Technology Solutions, another LLC operated by Chris Urban and Tomasz Szumny.
“He basically would do a short payoff with a private lender, and he wouldn’t disclose that he was selling a property to another one of his entities,” Valencia said.
Andrew Holmes, along with his business partner Mary Desloover, is suing the Urbans for allegedly running a “Ponzi-like scheme” by taking loans from individuals intended for rehabilitations to pay off their troubled debts across their properties, TRD previously reported. The Urbans moved to dismiss the lawsuit in July, arguing Holmes and Desloover didn’t provide enough evidence they had acted fraudulently. Holmes and his attorney declined to comment on the proceedings, and they have until Oct. 1 to reply to the motion.
Valencia is also suing to foreclose on two other properties that she has a first mortgage on through another LLC, Elixir Enterprises.
Elixir loaned the Urbans $175,000 for a mortgage at 12434 South Elizabeth Street in Calumet Park and $125,000 for a mortgage at 10504 South LaSalle Street in Chicago. Valencia said those payments stopped in February along with the others.
In another lawsuit filed in July, business loan company OnDeck is trying to recover $87,000 from Urban for a loan that went bad near the end of 2024. Urban took out a $155,000 loan in March 2024, according to the lawsuit, with a one-year repayment period, and began to miss payments in October 2024.
Renovo foreclosures continue
As new lawsuits stack up, the Urbans are still facing foreclosure lawsuits at dozens of properties with loans from Chicago-based Renovo Financial. Renovo pooled those debts into a few trusts and U.S. Bank was appointed as the trustee for the loan package.
Most of those cases are still being litigated. In several of those lawsuits, the court entered a foreclosure judgment against the Urbans’ properties, in some cases because they didn’t respond and in other cases after they answered the complaint.
In a few cases, the Urbans have received judges’ approvals to vacate foreclosure judgments and continue to litigate. In court filings asking to vacate a judgment, the Urbans’ attorney, Jeffrey Dan, noted they were facing more than 60 cases and their lack of answer was “due to excusable neglect.”
In at least two cases, the judge has approved a sheriff’s sale of the properties.
Urban previously told The Real Deal he planned to sell the properties with Renovo loans to avoid foreclosure. Some of the properties under foreclosure threats have been sold, and at least one lawsuit was dismissed after the property sold, records show.
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Inside a $14M fix-and-flip meltdown fueled by lender Renovo Financial