In the last week, several ideas for fixing the housing market have surfaced. One is the Third Way proposal, which appears to be an Administration trial balloon. Predictably, it is yet anther bailout, with plenty of smoke and mirrors to disguise that fact.
A second proposal, from Sheila Bair yesterday, is to establish a “foreclosure claims commission“. This is in keeping with the direction that Iowa’s Tom Miller has been pushing for with the 50 state attorneys general investigation. This scheme sounds more promising that the Third Way proposal, but is very likely to wind up in bailout territory.
Third is a not-widely-covered plan by Senator Jeff Merkley which has two provisions that would force banks to address the fact that mortgages are deeply under water. That makes it firmly anti-bailout (or more accurately, any resulting bailouts would be explicit as opposed to buried in various mortgage market gimmies to banks). It would thus speed recognition of housing market losses, force debt writedowns, and accelerate repricing and clearing of the housing market.
The Merkley proposal is pro consumer and pro investor; the other two are pro bank. Sadly, it isn’t hard to see which is likely to prevail in the absence of public pressure.
The Bair proposal was presented at the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting in DC, In addition to the not-very-fleshed out idea of a claims fund, she also proposed a list of fairly modest but still badly needed servicing reforms, the biggest being required write downs of second mortgages when the servicer is negotiating the first mortgage with a borrower, and a independent process for appealing loss mitigation turn-downs. The latter is useful but needs to be made broader. Borrowers still lack any recourse save costly and time-consuming litigation if they believe servicers have made errors, so independent review should include a disclosure and dispute process for routine servicing.
The restitution fund concept is worrisome. It is not yet clear whether it will be funded, which means it could be a joint private/public kitty. The provision of any explicit government funding in the absence of a serious investigation, including possible criminal action, is not warranted. The hallmark of this financial crisis is no perps, save some foot soldiers (the hapless robosigners, for instance) have been identified, much less held to account.
And even the private funding model is likely to prove unsatisfactory. HousingWire suggested that it might be based on the BP restitution fund. That’s a red flag. The BP fund was seen as a win for the embattled oil company, since BP was given several years to contribute money to the fund. In addition, even though the fund in theory did not limit BP’s liabilities, most investors reacted as if the damage had been capped. And given that any participant in the fund claims process had to waive his rights to litigate, the process did serve to limit exposure (particularly of the punitive damages sort). Moreover, many people who applied for damages were deemed not to be eligible because the harm they suffered was allegedly too indirect (think hotel owners in affected areas). Others were denied because they could not document revenue and expenses (many small fishermen run heavily cash-based operations that are not hugely profitable even in the best of times).
So it is also easy to imagine, as with the various government mortgage mod programs, that the banks will run the process and will use strict documentation requirements as a way to limit payouts, when their abuse of the documentation procedures they created is at the root of this crisis.
By contrast, there is much to like about the Merkley proposal, which was covered by Dave Dayen at FireDogLake. It has two mechanisms to force banks to recognize and realize losses on underwater mortgages, and thus put an end to “extend and pretend”.
First is a “national short refinance program”. Per Dayen:
When a bank sends a home into foreclosure, it becomes an REO property, to be sold at auction at a large loss for the investors. Instead of going through the long process of resale, with the attendant upkeep that has to be spent by the bank on the home, and the disruption to the property values from having a vacant home in their neighborhood, this short refi program would allow qualified families facing eviction to refinance to an FHA-guaranteed mortgage based on current property values and interest rates. In the interim the family could stay in the home during the appraisal, new underwriting and final resolution. Many families would be able to pay a reduced payment if the home was written down to real value. The investor would get a bigger payoff than selling a vacant home in foreclosure. Neighbors would see their communities stabilized without a vacant property in their midst. And the family would get to stay in their home.
The main effect of the FHA short refi program is likely not to be a wave of mass refis, but to force servicers to offer deep principal mods. If a mortgage leaves the pool via a refi, the servicer loses all of the fees associated with that loan. If the servicer concludes a mod, it still gets ongoing servicing income, but on a lower principal balance.
The second mechanism is judicial modifications, aka bankruptcy cramdowns. In pretty much every other type of secured lending, save for residential mortgages (which were exempted via legislation), when the borrower goes into bankruptcy, the secured debt is written down to the value of the debt, and any amount owing beyond that is added to unsecured debts. The idea is commonsensical: you can’t say a $200,000 mortgage is “secured” by a house now worth $160,000. The court process is well established and not controversial (as in you don’t see fulminating about abuses).
The scaremongering by the banking industry used to forestall judicial foreclosures is that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will run to the courthouse to get out of his mortgage, As anyone who has contemplated or gone though bankruptcy knows, it’s a very painful, humiliating, and disruptive process. And the widespread use of background checks as part of employment screening, with a bad credit record seen as a sign of bad character, is yet another deterrent. Correspondents of mine who would be ideal candidates (for instance, one is underwater due to investments gone sour and Chinese drywall making a sale of their home impossible, yet still have decent cashflow from their main business) are still loath to file.
Proof of the legitimacy of judicial mods as an option comes from the fact that most mortgage backed securities investors favor it, because they see it as a device for servicers to offer principal mods. With servicer fees and expenses coming first out of mortgage cashflow, the costly foreclosure process comes out of investors’ hides. All but a small percentage prefer principal mods because it will produce lower losses to them than costly foreclosures and sales of distressed property.
The Merkley plan has some other promising elements, such as requiring servicers to have a single point of contact (the Bair servicing reforms include this idea), a broad third party review process for mortgage mods (similar to successful programs at the state level) and the end of the “dual track” process (which keep the foreclosure process in motion while mod discussions are underway; this idea was present in a watered down form in the Bair speech as part of the foreclosure “settlement”).
Frankly, although individual borrowers may continue to suffer, the best prospect for an equitable long term solution is to let the wheels of justice continue to grind on. The outburst of reform ideas seems to be the direct result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Ibanez decision. The terms of debate are, perversely, still very much skewed in favor of banks despite the considerable harm they have done to homeowners, investors, and communities. But judges are increasingly abandoning the assumption that banks must be right in foreclosure cases, and a more objective posture is sure to put the banking industry even more on the back foot. Letting the courts continue to do their work offers the best hope of exposing, and therefore ultimately remedying, large-scale misconduct by the securitization industry.
For those who don't like math but do like colored circles, here's a graphic visualizing which cities it's cheaper to buy in and which it's cheaper to rent in. The redder the circler, the better it is to rent. The greener, the better it is to buy.
It's calculated based on the rent to buy ratio, which compares the median list price with the median rent on two-bedroom apartments, townhomes, and condos.
Check the Trulia site for more cities, as well as comparisons based on unemployment, foreclosure and job growth rates.
Trulia's Q1 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index [Trulia]
RELATED
This Number Tells You Whether You Should Buy Or Rent Your Home
Calculator Tells You Whether to Rent Or Buy
Is it Better To Buy or Rent?
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company In the last week, several ideas for fixing the housing market have surfaced. One is the Third Way proposal, which appears to be an Administration trial balloon. Predictably, it is yet anther bailout, with plenty of smoke and mirrors to disguise that fact.
A second proposal, from Sheila Bair yesterday, is to establish a “foreclosure claims commission“. This is in keeping with the direction that Iowa’s Tom Miller has been pushing for with the 50 state attorneys general investigation. This scheme sounds more promising that the Third Way proposal, but is very likely to wind up in bailout territory.
Third is a not-widely-covered plan by Senator Jeff Merkley which has two provisions that would force banks to address the fact that mortgages are deeply under water. That makes it firmly anti-bailout (or more accurately, any resulting bailouts would be explicit as opposed to buried in various mortgage market gimmies to banks). It would thus speed recognition of housing market losses, force debt writedowns, and accelerate repricing and clearing of the housing market.
The Merkley proposal is pro consumer and pro investor; the other two are pro bank. Sadly, it isn’t hard to see which is likely to prevail in the absence of public pressure.
The Bair proposal was presented at the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting in DC, In addition to the not-very-fleshed out idea of a claims fund, she also proposed a list of fairly modest but still badly needed servicing reforms, the biggest being required write downs of second mortgages when the servicer is negotiating the first mortgage with a borrower, and a independent process for appealing loss mitigation turn-downs. The latter is useful but needs to be made broader. Borrowers still lack any recourse save costly and time-consuming litigation if they believe servicers have made errors, so independent review should include a disclosure and dispute process for routine servicing.
The restitution fund concept is worrisome. It is not yet clear whether it will be funded, which means it could be a joint private/public kitty. The provision of any explicit government funding in the absence of a serious investigation, including possible criminal action, is not warranted. The hallmark of this financial crisis is no perps, save some foot soldiers (the hapless robosigners, for instance) have been identified, much less held to account.
And even the private funding model is likely to prove unsatisfactory. HousingWire suggested that it might be based on the BP restitution fund. That’s a red flag. The BP fund was seen as a win for the embattled oil company, since BP was given several years to contribute money to the fund. In addition, even though the fund in theory did not limit BP’s liabilities, most investors reacted as if the damage had been capped. And given that any participant in the fund claims process had to waive his rights to litigate, the process did serve to limit exposure (particularly of the punitive damages sort). Moreover, many people who applied for damages were deemed not to be eligible because the harm they suffered was allegedly too indirect (think hotel owners in affected areas). Others were denied because they could not document revenue and expenses (many small fishermen run heavily cash-based operations that are not hugely profitable even in the best of times).
So it is also easy to imagine, as with the various government mortgage mod programs, that the banks will run the process and will use strict documentation requirements as a way to limit payouts, when their abuse of the documentation procedures they created is at the root of this crisis.
By contrast, there is much to like about the Merkley proposal, which was covered by Dave Dayen at FireDogLake. It has two mechanisms to force banks to recognize and realize losses on underwater mortgages, and thus put an end to “extend and pretend”.
First is a “national short refinance program”. Per Dayen:
When a bank sends a home into foreclosure, it becomes an REO property, to be sold at auction at a large loss for the investors. Instead of going through the long process of resale, with the attendant upkeep that has to be spent by the bank on the home, and the disruption to the property values from having a vacant home in their neighborhood, this short refi program would allow qualified families facing eviction to refinance to an FHA-guaranteed mortgage based on current property values and interest rates. In the interim the family could stay in the home during the appraisal, new underwriting and final resolution. Many families would be able to pay a reduced payment if the home was written down to real value. The investor would get a bigger payoff than selling a vacant home in foreclosure. Neighbors would see their communities stabilized without a vacant property in their midst. And the family would get to stay in their home.
The main effect of the FHA short refi program is likely not to be a wave of mass refis, but to force servicers to offer deep principal mods. If a mortgage leaves the pool via a refi, the servicer loses all of the fees associated with that loan. If the servicer concludes a mod, it still gets ongoing servicing income, but on a lower principal balance.
The second mechanism is judicial modifications, aka bankruptcy cramdowns. In pretty much every other type of secured lending, save for residential mortgages (which were exempted via legislation), when the borrower goes into bankruptcy, the secured debt is written down to the value of the debt, and any amount owing beyond that is added to unsecured debts. The idea is commonsensical: you can’t say a $200,000 mortgage is “secured” by a house now worth $160,000. The court process is well established and not controversial (as in you don’t see fulminating about abuses).
The scaremongering by the banking industry used to forestall judicial foreclosures is that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will run to the courthouse to get out of his mortgage, As anyone who has contemplated or gone though bankruptcy knows, it’s a very painful, humiliating, and disruptive process. And the widespread use of background checks as part of employment screening, with a bad credit record seen as a sign of bad character, is yet another deterrent. Correspondents of mine who would be ideal candidates (for instance, one is underwater due to investments gone sour and Chinese drywall making a sale of their home impossible, yet still have decent cashflow from their main business) are still loath to file.
Proof of the legitimacy of judicial mods as an option comes from the fact that most mortgage backed securities investors favor it, because they see it as a device for servicers to offer principal mods. With servicer fees and expenses coming first out of mortgage cashflow, the costly foreclosure process comes out of investors’ hides. All but a small percentage prefer principal mods because it will produce lower losses to them than costly foreclosures and sales of distressed property.
The Merkley plan has some other promising elements, such as requiring servicers to have a single point of contact (the Bair servicing reforms include this idea), a broad third party review process for mortgage mods (similar to successful programs at the state level) and the end of the “dual track” process (which keep the foreclosure process in motion while mod discussions are underway; this idea was present in a watered down form in the Bair speech as part of the foreclosure “settlement”).
Frankly, although individual borrowers may continue to suffer, the best prospect for an equitable long term solution is to let the wheels of justice continue to grind on. The outburst of reform ideas seems to be the direct result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Ibanez decision. The terms of debate are, perversely, still very much skewed in favor of banks despite the considerable harm they have done to homeowners, investors, and communities. But judges are increasingly abandoning the assumption that banks must be right in foreclosure cases, and a more objective posture is sure to put the banking industry even more on the back foot. Letting the courts continue to do their work offers the best hope of exposing, and therefore ultimately remedying, large-scale misconduct by the securitization industry.
For those who don't like math but do like colored circles, here's a graphic visualizing which cities it's cheaper to buy in and which it's cheaper to rent in. The redder the circler, the better it is to rent. The greener, the better it is to buy.
It's calculated based on the rent to buy ratio, which compares the median list price with the median rent on two-bedroom apartments, townhomes, and condos.
Check the Trulia site for more cities, as well as comparisons based on unemployment, foreclosure and job growth rates.
Trulia's Q1 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index [Trulia]
RELATED
This Number Tells You Whether You Should Buy Or Rent Your Home
Calculator Tells You Whether to Rent Or Buy
Is it Better To Buy or Rent?
bench craft company>
In a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company[reefeed]
bench craft company
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company In the last week, several ideas for fixing the housing market have surfaced. One is the Third Way proposal, which appears to be an Administration trial balloon. Predictably, it is yet anther bailout, with plenty of smoke and mirrors to disguise that fact.
A second proposal, from Sheila Bair yesterday, is to establish a “foreclosure claims commission“. This is in keeping with the direction that Iowa’s Tom Miller has been pushing for with the 50 state attorneys general investigation. This scheme sounds more promising that the Third Way proposal, but is very likely to wind up in bailout territory.
Third is a not-widely-covered plan by Senator Jeff Merkley which has two provisions that would force banks to address the fact that mortgages are deeply under water. That makes it firmly anti-bailout (or more accurately, any resulting bailouts would be explicit as opposed to buried in various mortgage market gimmies to banks). It would thus speed recognition of housing market losses, force debt writedowns, and accelerate repricing and clearing of the housing market.
The Merkley proposal is pro consumer and pro investor; the other two are pro bank. Sadly, it isn’t hard to see which is likely to prevail in the absence of public pressure.
The Bair proposal was presented at the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting in DC, In addition to the not-very-fleshed out idea of a claims fund, she also proposed a list of fairly modest but still badly needed servicing reforms, the biggest being required write downs of second mortgages when the servicer is negotiating the first mortgage with a borrower, and a independent process for appealing loss mitigation turn-downs. The latter is useful but needs to be made broader. Borrowers still lack any recourse save costly and time-consuming litigation if they believe servicers have made errors, so independent review should include a disclosure and dispute process for routine servicing.
The restitution fund concept is worrisome. It is not yet clear whether it will be funded, which means it could be a joint private/public kitty. The provision of any explicit government funding in the absence of a serious investigation, including possible criminal action, is not warranted. The hallmark of this financial crisis is no perps, save some foot soldiers (the hapless robosigners, for instance) have been identified, much less held to account.
And even the private funding model is likely to prove unsatisfactory. HousingWire suggested that it might be based on the BP restitution fund. That’s a red flag. The BP fund was seen as a win for the embattled oil company, since BP was given several years to contribute money to the fund. In addition, even though the fund in theory did not limit BP’s liabilities, most investors reacted as if the damage had been capped. And given that any participant in the fund claims process had to waive his rights to litigate, the process did serve to limit exposure (particularly of the punitive damages sort). Moreover, many people who applied for damages were deemed not to be eligible because the harm they suffered was allegedly too indirect (think hotel owners in affected areas). Others were denied because they could not document revenue and expenses (many small fishermen run heavily cash-based operations that are not hugely profitable even in the best of times).
So it is also easy to imagine, as with the various government mortgage mod programs, that the banks will run the process and will use strict documentation requirements as a way to limit payouts, when their abuse of the documentation procedures they created is at the root of this crisis.
By contrast, there is much to like about the Merkley proposal, which was covered by Dave Dayen at FireDogLake. It has two mechanisms to force banks to recognize and realize losses on underwater mortgages, and thus put an end to “extend and pretend”.
First is a “national short refinance program”. Per Dayen:
When a bank sends a home into foreclosure, it becomes an REO property, to be sold at auction at a large loss for the investors. Instead of going through the long process of resale, with the attendant upkeep that has to be spent by the bank on the home, and the disruption to the property values from having a vacant home in their neighborhood, this short refi program would allow qualified families facing eviction to refinance to an FHA-guaranteed mortgage based on current property values and interest rates. In the interim the family could stay in the home during the appraisal, new underwriting and final resolution. Many families would be able to pay a reduced payment if the home was written down to real value. The investor would get a bigger payoff than selling a vacant home in foreclosure. Neighbors would see their communities stabilized without a vacant property in their midst. And the family would get to stay in their home.
The main effect of the FHA short refi program is likely not to be a wave of mass refis, but to force servicers to offer deep principal mods. If a mortgage leaves the pool via a refi, the servicer loses all of the fees associated with that loan. If the servicer concludes a mod, it still gets ongoing servicing income, but on a lower principal balance.
The second mechanism is judicial modifications, aka bankruptcy cramdowns. In pretty much every other type of secured lending, save for residential mortgages (which were exempted via legislation), when the borrower goes into bankruptcy, the secured debt is written down to the value of the debt, and any amount owing beyond that is added to unsecured debts. The idea is commonsensical: you can’t say a $200,000 mortgage is “secured” by a house now worth $160,000. The court process is well established and not controversial (as in you don’t see fulminating about abuses).
The scaremongering by the banking industry used to forestall judicial foreclosures is that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will run to the courthouse to get out of his mortgage, As anyone who has contemplated or gone though bankruptcy knows, it’s a very painful, humiliating, and disruptive process. And the widespread use of background checks as part of employment screening, with a bad credit record seen as a sign of bad character, is yet another deterrent. Correspondents of mine who would be ideal candidates (for instance, one is underwater due to investments gone sour and Chinese drywall making a sale of their home impossible, yet still have decent cashflow from their main business) are still loath to file.
Proof of the legitimacy of judicial mods as an option comes from the fact that most mortgage backed securities investors favor it, because they see it as a device for servicers to offer principal mods. With servicer fees and expenses coming first out of mortgage cashflow, the costly foreclosure process comes out of investors’ hides. All but a small percentage prefer principal mods because it will produce lower losses to them than costly foreclosures and sales of distressed property.
The Merkley plan has some other promising elements, such as requiring servicers to have a single point of contact (the Bair servicing reforms include this idea), a broad third party review process for mortgage mods (similar to successful programs at the state level) and the end of the “dual track” process (which keep the foreclosure process in motion while mod discussions are underway; this idea was present in a watered down form in the Bair speech as part of the foreclosure “settlement”).
Frankly, although individual borrowers may continue to suffer, the best prospect for an equitable long term solution is to let the wheels of justice continue to grind on. The outburst of reform ideas seems to be the direct result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Ibanez decision. The terms of debate are, perversely, still very much skewed in favor of banks despite the considerable harm they have done to homeowners, investors, and communities. But judges are increasingly abandoning the assumption that banks must be right in foreclosure cases, and a more objective posture is sure to put the banking industry even more on the back foot. Letting the courts continue to do their work offers the best hope of exposing, and therefore ultimately remedying, large-scale misconduct by the securitization industry.
For those who don't like math but do like colored circles, here's a graphic visualizing which cities it's cheaper to buy in and which it's cheaper to rent in. The redder the circler, the better it is to rent. The greener, the better it is to buy.
It's calculated based on the rent to buy ratio, which compares the median list price with the median rent on two-bedroom apartments, townhomes, and condos.
Check the Trulia site for more cities, as well as comparisons based on unemployment, foreclosure and job growth rates.
Trulia's Q1 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index [Trulia]
RELATED
This Number Tells You Whether You Should Buy Or Rent Your Home
Calculator Tells You Whether to Rent Or Buy
Is it Better To Buy or Rent?
bench craft company
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company bench craft company bench craft company
bench craft company bench craft companyIn a surprise even to insiders, 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager will lead the news division, along with Bloomberg's David Rhodes. Howard Kurtz on the back story—and what it spells for Katie Couric.
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
It was the Congressional version of never count your chickens before they're hatched.
bench craft company A lot of foreclosure-ridden counties have gotten monies from the federal government in the form of grants and stimulus dollars. Many of these counties will use those monies to purchase and fix up some of the abandoned homes littering neighborhoods across the U.S. as a result of the foreclosure crisis.
As a foreclosure cleanup business owner, you can grow your business by vying for some of the specific contracts and general contracting opportunities that will be available as a result of your county's influx of federal government cash.
How to Capitalize Off Monies Trickling Down to Your CountyTo capitalize off the monies trickling down to your county, start by sending your County Commissioners, including and especially the Commission Chairperson, a letter congratulating them on the funds, or the pending funds.
Let them know your foreclosure cleanup company is poised to help them get homes back in market-ready condition quickly and within budget.
Sample Letter to Your Commission ChairpersonHere's a sample letter you can send to your county's Commission Chairperson:
Dear Chairman Smith:
Congratulations on the 14.5 million dollar pending grant from the federal government to assist with the foreclosure crisis in our county. I am a resident and business owner in Any County. My business is ABC Foreclosure Cleanup located in Any City.
I'd like to offer my company's services to get our distressed and abandoned homes back in shape and ready for the market. ABC Foreclosure Cleanup specializes in the clearing out and cleaning up of properties that have been foreclosed upon. One of the few formalized, one-stop-shops in the area, we are fully licensed and insured.
Services Offered: Clearing out and hauling away of debris; cleaning of properties; lawn maintenance; minor repairs including repairing sheetrock and repairing broken windows/doors; interior and exterior painting; inspections; boarding windows and doors; locksmith services; pressure washing, gutter cleaning, and winterization; and documentation services (before and after digital photos and video).
We currently work with realtors, mortgage companies, investors and landlords in our great city, and look forward to partnering with the county through your office.
I invite you and your colleagues to visit our website at [Website Address] for more information. You can reach me directly at [Phone Number] to schedule a meeting to discuss how we can assist Any County.
Thank you for consideration of my correspondence, and I look forward to working with your office in the near future.
Sincerely,
John Smith, CEO, ABC Foreclosure Cleanup
TIP: Address the letter to the Chairperson and copy all of the Commissioners on the correspondence so they know about your company.
How to Find Out What's Going On In Your CommunityTo stay abreast of what's going on in your county, watch the local news, read the local newspapers, and scour the internet to find out how much money your county has received (or will receive). Shortly after the first letter, send a follow-up letter to remind the Commissioners you are still poised to help out.
Not too long after that, follow-up with a phone call to any of your County Commissioners and try to get an informal meeting to discuss how your company can be of assistance to the county. These are our elected officials, and part of their duty is to "hear" local citizens.
Go to Local Commission MeetingsFind out when and where the meetings of the County Commissioners are held for your county and plan to attend. Most counties have public meetings regularly. When you attend one of these local meetings, stand up and ask a question when appropriate. For example, you may say, "I am John Smith from ABC Foreclosure Cleanup, and I have a question about ...." Then proceed to ask a question pertinent to the topic at hand.
Remember, the County Commissioners and the Chairperson will have gotten your letters and received your calls. When you stand up at the meeting, they will now see your face and associate it with the correspondence you will have sent them. You will likely be the only foreclosure cleanup company to have reached out to them consistently and formally, and now they will know your face (more often than not, unlike that of your competition).
People Like Doing Business with People They Know People appreciate doing business with people they know and with business owners with whom they associate. Use the local Commission meetings to formally introduce yourself and your foreclosure cleanup business and to start the formal association process.
The next day after the formal meeting, send a handwritten Thank You card to each Commissioner and the Commission Chair. Thank them for the opportunity to have participated in the meeting the day before. Tell them you look forward to participating in future meetings offering your input and suggestions to continue to better your county and surrounding areas. Sign the card with your name, your business title and your business name.
One Step CloserYou will be one step closer to the federal grant and stimulus money trickling down to counties all across the U.S. Remember, your county needs your foreclosure cleanup company's services, so help them find you easily by corresponding regularly and by participating in the local Commission meetings.
Good luck with your foreclosure cleanup business.
Cassandra Black is the Author of How to Start a Foreclosure Cleanup Business: FREE Articles & Advice Blog, How to Start a Foreclosure Cleanup Business, How to Register Your Business with HUD & Other Government Contracting Agencies: One-Stop Resource to Locate Government Contracts, Pricing Guide for Foreclosure Cleaning & Real-Estate Service Businesses, How to Market Your Foreclosure Cleanup Business, the Foreclosure Cleanup Business Combo Estimate & Contract Form, (and other cleanup business forms) and the Housing Authority Master Contacts List with Bonus Search Tool. Cassandra is also the CEO of Foreclosure Cleanup, LLC, Real Estate Cleanup, Atlanta, GA, and an Investor & Landlord (TheCassandraGroup RE).
