Property Preservation: Helping Neighborhoods Recover

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 them has been frustrating to cities everywhere. So they’ve tried to take matters into their own homes. Unfortunately, they’ve just replaced the bureaucratic inefficiency of these financial institutions with their own bureaucratic inefficiency.

New York had the funds to buy 115 foreclosed homes and fix them up. After a year since Mayor Bloomberg announced this impressive goal, the Big Apple has bought exactly 8 homes – and hasn’t had property preservation performed on any of them.

San Francisco tried a different tack when it levied fines on owners of abandoned homes who left them to rot. It required these owners to register their vacant properties. Guess what? Over two-thirds of the owners simply didn’t register. Most people aren’t anxious to raise their hand and ask to pay a $750 fine.

It seemed like good news when government was finally starting to step in to handle the overwhelming number of foreclosures that desperately needed property preservation services. Now it’s beginning to look like they’re just prolonging the problem.

Our industry can live with that as we have more than enough foreclosures to keep us busy. But can America’s neighborhoods live with that?

If you’re interested in pursuing the amazing property preservation business opportunity, I invite you to visit www.REOResQ.com for more information on how we can help you get started.

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