We all want to drive down the street in our neighborhood and see clean yards and tidy houses. In today’s era of rampant foreclosures this is increasingly impossible. I want to bring your attention to a way that I feel we can help curb this stigmatic issue. If we make the house livable inside and out it will restore prosperity and a lasting desire to build future growth in that neighborhood. We must live up to the description of “preservation” and not just tape it up so it doesn’t fall down. The real problem is community blight and the real solution is a greater intimacy with the preservation of properties, which can be done best on a regional level where the company in charge is able to apply a much greater amount of attention to detail. In states with little or no redemption period, it is imperative that the preservation company gives the right information to the lender or big costly mishaps could happen. Bigger national companies with less direct oversight are more likely to make a mistake that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
The most important parts of managing a preservation company are dissolving community blight through timely and good quality work. Limiting the amount of internal errors by utilizing a thorough quality control program, and ensuring that every property is managed at every level whether it is worth 4 million or $30,000.
Communities in the United States are complex melting pots of diversity. People in the city do things differently than those in the suburbs. People in the country do things differently than those in the suburbs and vice versa. To people that live in small towns like Thurman, Iowa just one foreclosure on a prominent street can change the whole tone of how outsiders view that town. Which could also mean a lack of prospective economic growth.
While some National Preservation companies boast large portfolios, deep pockets, and the ability to appear in perpetual compliance, they may not be the best answer for the big bank’s goals. With a national grasp comes the inability to tailor one’s preservation tactics to the individual needs of all different types of communities.
It is almost an impossibility for a large national preservation company who thrives on large portfolios to pay attention to outside properties that are hard for them to reach with a vendor network that is designed to prosper based off a large amount of properties. A boots on the ground network thrives with volume based increments of properties and a contractor will gladly take care of medium to large portfolios of properties. They are however, less likely to go to the properties on the outskirts. Completion percentages and service level agreements will remain high for those National entities because they will tend to have great completion rates in their metropolitan statistical areas. With a regional approach, all properties hold the same value and are cared for on all levels.
From a preservation perspective, the only way we can limit the length of a home in foreclosure is through expediting the process of preserving that individual unit. A positive way we can do that is through changing the conversation away from this national mentality of “bigger is better” and down to the idea of a compliance-oriented structured system that allows for much better control over every aspect individually. Every foreclosed home needs to be of equal importance in order for the proper job to be done.