BlogProperty 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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