BlogForeclosure Trash Outs: The Golden Opportunity Monday, August 30th, 2010 I’ve shared lots of success stories about people who restarted their careers (and their lives) by starting a property preservation company. You’ll find the latest one in my new article, “Property Preservation Can Mean a Whole New Life”. The story of this couple, the Hosers, isn’t all that different from the others’. They had their own contracting business, which, unfortunately, they began in 2007, just as the economy really started rolling downhill. So they established a division of their business performing foreclosure trash outs – and soon discovered that new division was making most of the money. If they hadn’t gone into the property preservation business – they might not have a business here in 2010. It’s clear they discovered, as many others have, that property preservation is the biggest foreclosure business opportunity in today’s economy – and that discovery made all the difference to their bottom line. Many others haven’t been so lucky in recent years. But the fact is the property preservation opportunity is still … Foreclosure Trash Outs: The Big Cities Want Action Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 They say all the big trends begin in California. Well, this past July, the Los Angeles city council passed an ordinance requiring banks and other asset management companies to perform prompt foreclosure trash outs on abandoned properties they were responsible for, making it the biggest city to date to pass such a law. There is usually a limbo period between the time when a mortgage holder is notified that they’re in default and the time when the lender actually takes possession of the property. That’s when the abandoned home begins to become an eyesore and a health hazard. As more and more foreclosures have been piling up all over the country, the longer it takes for lenders to take title. The L.A. council is insisting the lenders begin attending to the properties as soon as the mortgage default notice is sent out. And they’re willing to fine the banks up to $100,000 if they don’t comply. Other cities hit hard by foreclosure are considering similar laws, … Foreclosure Trash Outs: A New Standard Brings New Profits Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 The news for property preservation companies keeps getting better. Unless, of course, some of those companies are getting tired of working so much! In my new article, “Powering Up Property Preservation,” I quote Robert Klein, chairman and founder of Safeguard Properties, a national property preservation company, who talks about how selling foreclosed homes has become much more competitive. Which means a whole new level of property preservation is required to restore foreclosures to a state comparable to other conventional real estate for sale. It used to be enough that REO (Real Estate Owned) homes sold for less. That was their main attraction to buyers. Now that there are millions of REOs out there on the market, sellers want them to look better – and even smell better. Believe it or not, language is even changing. Safeguard, which does about 1 million property inspections a month, is beginning to call foreclosure trash outs “maid service” (no, I’m not joking) – and “cash for keys” is becoming known as … Foreclosure Trash Outs: What Government Can Do Right Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 There’s a lot of anger at government these days. The “Tea Party” movement demonstrates that. A majority of people think government has become completely ineffective. But when it comes to the overwhelming number of vacant homes in communities all across America, there is something government can do right. Particularly local government. I’ve written extensively in my articles and blogs about the blight of foreclosed homes that have yet to be processed or dealt with by the banks and financial institutions that now own them. These homes just sit empty month after month, becoming a bigger and bigger eyesore due to theft and vandalism, a bigger and bigger safety hazard, and driving local property values lower and lower. This certainly does the banks no good – the homes end up losing more and more value by falling into increasing disrepair. Fortunately, communities continue to fight back. In Aurora, Colorado, they began charging banks a fee to register foreclosures ($50 a year) and forced them to … Foreclosure Trash Outs: More Homes, More Profits Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 If you’re having trouble making ends meet in today’s economy, this blog is for you – because it just may have the answer you’re looking for. To begin with, the foreclosure crisis in America is far from over. As a matter of fact, signs point to it getting increasingly bleak. In the first half of 2010, the number of foreclosures again broke all records – in large part, because old foreclosure inventory is finally being dealt with by the banks. There are millions of homes in that inventory still to come. That’s the past that’s continuing to haunt the housing market. At the same time, there are a record number of mortgages that are in delinquency – that’s the future. The economic recovery is sputtering and homeowners who can’t find jobs are falling more and more behind on home payments. Many of them find it’s easier to just walk away from their houses. All this adds up to more vacant properties than … Foreclosure Trash Outs: The Heat Is On! Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 Every season brings a new challenge to vacant foreclosures. In the winter months, frozen pipes need to be avoided by proper winterization. When summertime rolls around however, there are completely new problems to deal with. One of those I wrote about in my article, “Foreclosure Trash Outs: When Lawns Turn into Jungles” – the transformation of an ordinary suburban lawn into a studio backlot set for a Tarzan picture. Anybody remember the old “Oklahoma” musical lyric? Well, instead of the corn being “as high as an elephant’s eye,” it’s now the grass. But just as big a problem, if not bigger? Air conditioning units are getting ripped off – and ripped out of the walls. It’s not just the A/C the thieves are after – it’s also the copper wiring, an incredibly popular target for vandals breaking into unoccupied homes. Foreclosure Trash Outs: Being A Good Neighbor IS Good For Business Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 Most of us in the property preservation business are making really good money at this time. That’s great. But the other big thing to consider about our line of work? In a way, we’re singlehandedly saving America’s neighborhoods. Maybe that sounds egotistical, but foreclosures are at all-time highs. When our property preservation services aren’t utilized, when foreclosure trash outs aren’t performed and these vacant homes are not secured, they become a completely destructive element in neighborhoods – attracting crime, vandalism and becoming more and more of a safety hazard. In my new article, “Just Like a Good Neighbor,” I talk about a property services company that began leaving door hangers on homes next door to foreclosures that they secured. The door hangers featured an 800 number residents could call if they saw something fishy happening at the foreclosure next door. How smart is this? Incredibly smart – on several levels. First of all, you suddenly have these people … Property Preservation: Legalize Foreclosure Trash Outs! Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 Okay, so the title of this blog is a little misleading – there’s nothing about performing foreclosure trash outs that’s against the law. But in a lot of areas of America, there’s no legal obligation to perform them either. Which is a big reason that a lot of local legislators have now decided to create that obligation, as you can read in my new article, “Foreclosure Trash Outs Battle the Blight.” When vacant homes are allowed to sit without any repairs or maintenance, they quickly become an eyesore and a safety hazard, as local communities all across the country have sadly learned in recent years. That’s why more and more city councils, county governments and state legislatures are passing more and more laws to hold the big banks who own those properties accountable. That’s good news for all of us in the property preservation field. Yes, it’s true that property preservation is already the biggest foreclosure business opportunity. But the fact is … Property Preservation: The Foreclosure Trash Out Business Opportunity Keeps On Growing Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 You know the old saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Well, the economy continues to give us a lot of difficult “lemons” – including an incredible number of home foreclosures, with another record number hitting the real estate market in March. Consider these facts: • 29% of all home sales are REO properties (homes that have been through foreclosure). In Las Vegas, that figure is 49%. While the stock market is doing well at the moment, average working Americans still are not – and it will be increasingly difficult for them to keep up with their mortgages. Real estate prices continue to fall and that will put more and more homeowners “underwater” – … Property Preservation Trashouts: Fixing The Face of Foreclosure Friday, April 30th, 2010 The face of foreclosure isn’t a pretty one. And it’s been growing uglier and uglier over the last few years. Because the foreclosure process was traditionally slow and cumbersome – and totally unequipped to handle the massive amount it’s been forced to digest during the Great Recession – more and more vacant homes in more and more neighborhoods have become more and more rundown and in desperate need of a trashout. Graffiti. Gardens and lawns overgrown with weeds. Insect-infested pools. Broken windows. Unsafe interiors. Copper pipe ripped out of the walls. Appliances stolen. This is what many Americans, who pay their mortgages on time, have had to deal with sitting next door to them; unsightly, unsafe eyesores that bring down the value of their homes, threaten the well-being of their kids and attract crime and unsavory elements. As I reported in my recent article, “More Foreclosures Trash Outs Coming Faster,” HUD has recently closed up some bureaucratic obstacles to vacant … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: PROPER PREPARATION MEANS MORE PROFITS Monday, April 5th, 2010 I’ve said it many times: Property preservation is the biggest foreclosure business opportunity in existence today. It’s why my brother Scott and I founded REO ResQ™, the first nationwide property preservation franchise founded by foreclosure experts. Scott and I know the various issues involved with property preservation; as I write in my new article, “Expert Training Makes the Difference”, performing foreclosure clean outs themselves isn’t that difficult. But knowing all the steps that have to be completed and how to handle different situations you may encounter at various properties is essential knowledge to have before you start a property preservation company. Master contractors and other companies that hire property preservation contractors may want to test you on your knowledge of how to carry out basic mortgage field services, especially when it comes to FHA and HUD guidelines. You need to have those answers in your head when that happens. Even if they don’t test you, this is still essential information that … Property Preservation: Helping Neighborhoods Recover Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 A properly secured foreclosure can make a huge difference to a neighborhood. In a New York City suburb, squatters took up residence in a vacant home that had yet to see any property preservation services. They lived there for three weeks. Imagine being next door to that kind of situation – where you had no idea who these people were or what they were capable of. Biggest twist to the story? New York City had bought the property in order to rehabilitate it and help the neighborhood. Instead of taking any action, however, the city just continued to let it sit vacant for another few months. We all know that property preservation is the biggest foreclosure business opportunity. But it’s also the most important. As I’ve written before, property preservation helps neighborhoods be safer and more secure. Abandoned homes are currently adding to community blight all across the country. The slowness of the financial institutions that own these homes to deal with … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: THE NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NEW DECADE Monday, January 4th, 2010 Everything is changing. That’s evident from the headlines every day. The economic downturn has forced businesses and all of us to evolve, if we want to survive. The average American worker can no longer put their faith into just being employees of big companies. They end up lacking control of their future – because corporations are, as we’ve seen, quick to downsize when it’s necessary. That’s why it’s a great time to start your own business – and a great time to make that business the property preservation business. In this era of record-setting home mortgage defaults, property preservation is the biggest foreclosure business opportunity in America today, especially if you do it through our start-up system at REOResQ™. Start-up is affordable, training is fast (usually two weeks) and the demand for your services will be strong. The banks that end up owning foreclosed homes need them cleaned out, repaired and brought back to market quickly so they can mitigate their mortgage losses. … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: DO THE MATH AND MAKE THE MONEY Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 2010 is going to be another record-breaking year for the property preservation business – it remains the biggest foreclosure business opportunity around. In 2009, we were proud to see our first 10 REO ResQ™ franchisees open their doors at various locations all across the country – and we’re sure this year will bring a whole new group of successful start-ups. If you’re thinking of starting a property preservation company, especially if this bad economy has you scrambling for cash, you should know your services will be in demand. The massive amount of foreclosures – some estimate the number of vacant homes at seven million – are going to need servicing sooner rather than later. Neighborhoods are fed up with dealing with abandoned homes and so are local communities. When I said “Do the Math and Make the Money” in the title of this blog, I was serious. Most basic foreclosure trash outs pay anywhere from $200 to $500 – additional services, such as … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: VITAL TO PUBLIC SAFETY Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 In my new article, “More Government Action: More Property Preservation,” I detailed the efforts of one Colorado community to clean out and clean up foreclosures. All across the country, neighborhoods are being presented with a new and growing crisis – empty homes that haven’t officially been classified as foreclosures or REO homes posing public health and safety risks. I’ve written about this “shadow inventory” before – and the urgent need for REO sellers to process these homes quickly and hire the necessary property preservation experts to secure and maintain these homes. There’s no question that property preservation is already one of the biggest foreclosure business opportunities available – but there are still thousands of homes that need basic mortgage field services, just for the sake of public safety. A recent article from UPI.com details just one of the crazy consequences of having too many vacant homes sitting out there. In San Diego, neighborhoods hard hit by foreclosures are breaking … HUD STILL MISSING THE PROPERTY PRESERVATION OPPORTUNITY Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 A few weeks ago, I gave a big thumbs-up to HUD for beginning to acknowledge that they need to speed up the property preservation process to handle foreclosure homes a lot faster. A recent article in “The Cleveland Plain Dealer” makes it plain that HUD’s continuing bureaucratic dysfunction is causing a lot of pain in local neighborhoods. HUD, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, ends up owning homes when mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Authority go into foreclosure. More often than not, these homes sit empty in disrepair – property preservation companies and foreclosure contractors are not employed by the government to fix them up. Not only that, but cities and local governments are helpless to do anything about these homes, because they’re owned by the Federal government, which “outranks” them. In the Cleveland area, HUD has owned over 2000 homes in the last few years alone. They often sell these homes – again, without having any property preservation work done … WASHINGTON D.C. FINALLY ADMITS – PROPERTY PRESERVATION NEEDS TO BE A PRIORITY Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 The government is finally beginning to wake up – and wise up – to how the incredible ongoing avalanche of foreclosures has the potential to be a giant blight on cities. No one has really come up with an organized way to deal with the record-setting number of foreclosures – there will be 3 million in 2009, and 2010 doesn’t look like it will be much of an improvement, if at all. Soaring unemployment has sustained the mortgage default wave initiated by shaky subprime loans. Now HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is speeding up the way it deals with property preservation companies and other foreclosure service companies. They’re going to make it easier for them to do the work and to get paid – two great goals. I’ve been saying for months now that the old way of handling foreclosures isn’t practical for these times. The real estate industry is not used to this incredible amount of distressed property being … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: “GIT R DONE!” Thursday, October 29th, 2009 With the rise in foreclosures, there’s also been a rise in controversy regarding the industries that service foreclosures, such as property preservation businesses. In my recent article, “Property Preservation: A Tale of Two Carolinas,” one online piece I cited stirred up a whole hornet’s nest of debate. The article, “What’s Left Behind,” was posted on the political Salon.com website on September 30th and you can view it here. It was written by a woman whose boyfriend does foreclosure trash outs. She ended up working alongside him and, truth to be told, ended up enjoying the adventure of it. 188 letters were posted in response to this article, many of them calling the woman and her boyfriend all kinds of vile names because they were part of the foreclosure process. To quote one that I can repeat in mixed company: “Listen, honey, you are the bad guys – you’re vultures.” Fortunately, the majority of the posters seem to realize … PROPERTY PRESERVATION: WE DON’T JUST PAINT THE HOUSE! Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 If you haven’t seen it, check out my new article, “Foreclosures: Taking Care of the Yard Work,” where I write about how cities all across the country, already strapped for cash, are fining banks and lenders who aren’t tending to the lawns of foreclosures. Those bills can add up to over two hundred dollars for one grass cutting. Much more than you or I made as a kid mowing lawns!
But you can’t just point a finger of blame at the financial institutions left holding the bag (and the homes) after a homeowner defaults. It takes months to process a foreclosure and the record-setting number of them on the market makes it hard to keep up with the mushrooming inventory.
That’s why the grass can reach heights of two or three feet before a property preservation company is employed to take care of maintaining that lawn. Sometimes, the worst can happen, especially in dry, hot Southern California and Arizona climates – … THE OVER-EAGER FORECLOSURE CONTRACTOR Thursday, July 9th, 2009 We train our REO ResQ™ franchisees to be incredibly efficient. They pride themselves on delivering trash out services on deadline and getting the job done on time.
But a recent story that came to my attention demonstrates that maybe a property preservation company can be too efficient!
Ted Poetsch, a man who lived his entire life in the same Minneapolis house, had been fighting legal battles for three years to keep his home. He ended up losing his final chance to avoid foreclosure this past May, and, in the middle of having lunch, he found out the city inspector, who had deemed the house unsafe to live in, had given him an hour’s notice to pack up everything and leave.
That’s almost an impossible task when you’ve been in the same place for 53 years. But Ted gave it a try.
As he was packing a few things, he happened to hear the noise of a power drill … THE PROPERTY PRESERVATION BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY Thursday, July 9th, 2009 By Frank Patrick
When my brother Scott and I officially launched REO RESQ™, we obviously knew this was the right time to start a nationwide foreclosure home trash-out franchise. With foreclosures expected to continue on the rise for the next two years, REO Sellers and Master Contractors have more homes that need field services than ever before.
But, frankly, even we were shocked at the success of the Singletons, a couple we trained in property preservation in mid-2008. You can read their story in more detail in my article, “Starting a Profitable Property Preservation Company” – and hear an extended interview with them at http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=7824126.
What’s remarkable about the Singletons is that they had absolutely no experience in this field. We trained them, they decided on impulse to bet on Las Vegas, moved there in their trailer in August of last year, and immediately began picking up work – despite knowing no one in … REO RESQ™: PROPERTY PRESERVATION 101 Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 The so-called third wave of foreclosures is coming. The first wave was made up of the unlucky people getting in on the real estate boom at just the wrong moment – and found themselves unable to flip the houses they had suddenly just paid too much money for. The second wave consisted of the holders of subprime mortgages, who found their payments going up just as the economy and the value of their house was going down.
This third wave consists of stable homeowners with relatively normal mortgages, who have now been victimized by the growing job losses consuming America at the moment. They may have been downsized or just lost overtime pay, and now can’t afford their monthly payments.
So we will be seeing more and more foreclosures not only in such already hard hit areas as Sacramento, Phoenix and Las Vegas, but also in cities and towns across America that weren’t overbuilding during the real estate rocket ride. What … REO RESQ™: MORE THAN JUST TAKING OUT THE TRASH Thursday, May 14th, 2009 Welcome to my first REO RESQ™ blog – we’re very proud of our new nationwide franchise and we hope you’ll come visit our website at REORESQ.com often. So what’s the big deal about starting a property preservation business? To most people, cleaning up a house and getting it ready for sale – not that big a deal, right? Well, that depends. When you walk into a foreclosure property, quite frankly, you could be in for some major shocks to your system. I’ve made some grisly discoveries – family pets left behind without food or water that did not survive – and some just plain disgusting discoveries – mountains of trash that defy description. Imagine having to rent a tractor-trailer and fill it just to get rid of garbage in a house! Well, I’ve done just that – as a matter of fact, one house took two tractor-trailers! So, when I say my brother Scott and I have plenty of hands-on experience in property … |
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