HUD And REO Property Preservation

BPWY

Actually I was referring to the ripoffreport glowing report from the one poster.

If you are happy with safeguard I'm glad for you. Keep working for them.

There are too many negative reports about them that match my personal experience with their poor actions for me to believe that they are that good of an outfit to work for.
My personal experience with them shows they are a despicable half axx run company.

ARPPP

Thanks,
they are claiming the $50 fee is waived, but they still want your credit card info. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for you to get paid.
Did they tell you a fee schedule and/or how much their discount rate was off of HUD?
[/quote]


I just got a new fee schedule emailed to me yesterday. Send me an email and I will share with you.

Annette Rogers
annette@arppp.net

BPWY

As for the rest of your post.
I didn't insult you, your mother, your business ability or non ability, your alligator mouth and your work ethic.
Apparently my comment that wasn't directed at you hit a little closer to home than what you claim?????
Ever hear of the term, "he protests too much"??????????


You are correct about one thing and one thing only. You know nothing about me.


You are also 100% wrong about this statement.
How the hell do you think I ran across the bad news about Safeguard????????????????????????????????????????? ??

I was searching multiple companies that I've either signed with or considering signing with.



I am not going to get into a pissing match with you. I don't have the time.
Consider this my last posting to you on this matter.

oteroproperties

I appreciate your lack of time and share that problem which is reflected in my number of overall posts here. I am a diplomatic person, probably more then I should be which is why I tend to put the other side on the table even if it has nothing to do with me. I'm sorry if my words gave you the impression that I had some underlying aggression to get out. The only compaint I have right now is that I dont have enough work. However it seems to be par for the course for the entire industry at this point.

Either way there are 2 sides to every coin. On this forum there just seem to be more people on the tails side. This is what has kept me from posting for so long. Conformity is not my strong suit. Guess ill go back to being a quite observer and leave you to it...........

night all

__________________
Residential Electrician 95-04
Residential Construction Manager 04-06
Real Estate Investor 05-06
Property Preservation Contractor 05-current

FremontREO

OK guys and girls I feel there needs to be a referee here....
"whistle blowing" for a timeout

Safeguard is a selfish company but they all can be. I have friends who absolutely love them and depend on them for the lions share of their business and on the other side of the coin we could not get along with them so had to drop providing services for them. In todays business world I may have tried to hang on with them a little longer? My final straw was an approval to mow a 4 acre lot that was covered with 20foot tall ironweeds (if you don't know what an ironweed is-they are up to 2" thick and hard...kinda like a softer bamboo for the southern crowd) and after climbing on top of the roof of a house to get the entire field pictured and the bid was approved we mowed with a JD tractor with belly mower and the weeds were twice the height of a full sized tractor and after 160+ pictures they denied payment since they "couldn't tell it was mowed".
That was the final straw (no pun intended) but still things worked out since the house and the field was seperated by an abandoned alley and the mayor lived next door so he told us for $36.00 we could buy that abandoned alley so we went to the next council meeting and purchased that little abandoned alley and fenced it off so the only access to the field from the house was 1 mile away to a gate that stopped abt 50' at a ravine.....The bank was forced to give us an offer to purchase the old abandoned alley and the price went to $10,000 and 2 years later Safeguard had to purchase that little abandoned alley or build a bridge over the ravine... my price was cheaper! The happiest day I could remember was telling the Safeguards atty that I just got paid for the chargeback and a lot more.....

mtmtnman

It's nice your willing to add to Safeguards bottow line but us contractors in remote areas out west cannot put up with their CHEAP CHEAP rates and constant BS. We literally DO NOT HAVE TIME. I cover over 1600 miles a week in the summer to mow between 25 & 30 lawns with the occasional secure thrown into the mix. First American pay HUD allowables minus 20% so i make between $1800 & 2200 a week. I cover this route in 4 days.
If i was doing the same thing for Safeguard i would make between $750 & $900 a week. You see where the numbers do not add up? We do not have access to cheap labor as you do in Florida either. The workforce you can get down there for $7-8 an hour cost's me double here thus the reason i am a one man band. You know DAMN well Safeguard is billing full HUD allowables to the bank (up to 10,000 $80 & 10-15,000 $100) and giving the contractors 30 bucks! You also do not have the lawn size we have here. About 40% 0f the lawns i cut are between 10 & 15,000 sq ft where HUD allowable is $100 so i get $80 and with Safeguard up to 1/4 acre still pays $30!!!! So you go on being happy a you seem to like being screwed for 50% ow what most every other national pays...........................

BPWY

Fremont you da man.

I love that story. Once the deal was completed and the check cleared I'd probably have been tempted to called up the QC manager and told him that it really would have been cheaper to have just paid for the grass cut.

oteroproperties

no more battles,

Cheap labor? We are 4 brothers and my wifes sister does the updates. I pay as much as I can and still keep the doors open. We all live very good lifes but we are not rich. we have 4 trucks that I bought and fixed, I built the dovetails on them my self, all my equipment came from craigslist broken but now fixed by me. I have a 2000 sf office warehouse that allows us to stock quite a bit of spare equipment and material. I have alot of spare equipment because my equipment is used and you never know. The other day I blew the engine in one of the trucks and didnt even skip a beat. I had another one waiting. The blown engine is half rebuilt as of this moment.

I think none of us are on the same page, I only do P&P. those numbers are a lot different then reo. you guys definitley get screwed. My area is much more densely populated then yours which allows me to put more money in my pocket then in my gas tanks. I really am sorry you all took a beating from these companies but I haven't thus far, whats wrong with the other side of the story?

__________________
Residential Electrician 95-04
Residential Construction Manager 04-06
Real Estate Investor 05-06
Property Preservation Contractor 05-current

XanadooLTD

I have seen this before. Technically grass cuts with high grass like that needs to be raked and removed. I have seen other just roll over the grass and knock it down, so it kind of covers the guys who do it right. I think it is a good practice.

mtmtnman

What i am trying to say is your getting the short end too. Run the numbers for your company if Safeguard was paying you full HUD allowables minus a fair discount instead of the pittance they pay you. You would be doing extremely well. If Safeguard was NOT charging the banks full HUD allowables every bank in the country would be flooding them with work and no other companies would have any work as Safeguard works for many of the same banks as the other nationals. My whole point is Safeguard is getting rich on your back breaking labor. They are collecting better than 50% of what they are charging the banks and giving you, the contractor the scraps. Me? I will stay with the companies paying HUD rates. I am running a business not a charity here. Good luck............

BPWY

Speaking of grass cuts...... I cannot believe some of the things I see other "contractors" do and get away with on grass cuts.
Things like not trimming along the fences, trees and house, PILES of clippings all over the place. They don't mulch, bag, or rake them up.

I guess they are good at taking pics to hide what they are really doing.


Oh and what about the $30/35 fee for real honest to God edging the sidewalks and driveways? Not just cutting the grass back with the trimmer.
Around here we get enough wind that dirt blows in and builds up the lawn some times INCHES above the side walks. First of all the edger blade isn't long enough to get down to the concrete to edge. Second of all if it did there would be so much discarded dirt to remove it will take hours to properly do the job.
I used to do all lawn care with a mix of P&P thrown in. Even then folks around here don't edge their sidewalks. Just trim the grass back with the trimmer. Its rare to see properly edged properties here. And certainly not on a foreclosure.

What do the rest of you guys do?

BPWY

Vacuum cleaner recommendations.

I, like most don't care for maid services in these dirty nasty houses. But thats part of the job.
My current standard house hold vac has lived a hard life and is nearing the end of its road. I need some recommendations on a new one.
A friend of mine said that the orecks are the best. Thats cool, except they don't have an attachment option. We kinda need that for vacuuming out the corners.
It'd be nice to find a rug vac with the power of a shop vac.


Equipment opinions??????????

BPWY

All the nationals are banging the contractors on the REO services. Of this I'm confident. For example a national gives out an initial clean out on $650 allowable without bidding.
From different contractors I've talked to many of the banks are paying $900 for this. So the national takes off $250, gives it to us at $650 minus their standard discount rate, getting paid twice on the same job.

Now I can't prove it, but it sure seems suspicious.

My goal is to get more and more local business thru agents and local banks. I feel that they'll appreciate the effort that goes into the jobs far more than a cubicle worker stuck in OH some where, or TX, or FL trying to QC our work thru pics.
Seems to be those states where most of the big nationals are located.


In a few years when the high numbers of foreclosures go away and the quick money to be made is dried up only the most dedicated of us will still be in business offering quality services.

mtmtnman

An all in one just is not convenient. Think about doing stairs. The all in ones do not have a hose long enough to reach. Better off with the Oreck and the Oreck portable with a shoulder strap. With the extensions you can reach 12' up so ceiling fans Ect are no problem. Try reaching a ceiling fan with an all in one. Also Oreck is the ONLY thing i have seen that will get the crap up off of rough cut hardwood floors.........

FremontREO

Yeah I know your point--seen it quit a few times myself. This one was a tad different though when the weeds were as high as the edge of the roof of a 2 story barn (with a hay loft)..The pics were absolutely hilarious. (I'm looking for them now but they were a few years ago and filed on a external hd) Ya all will laugh your butts off! What was sad was we ran through 3 sets of belly mower blades that got ruined hitting an old car, tons of old barb wire, paints, batteries and metal from whatnot in the field but you couldn't see it.. This was right in heart of a small town and the bank just ignored till the City Atty got to the right person.
BPWY::: My favorite vacuum is the one I get for free out of a trashout that works.. Cheap and don't care if I ruin the thing. Just bought a new Rug Doctor that lasted for 5-6 jobs and ruined the belt on some loose carpet fibers so that $59.00 "sucker" served its life span. I've bought expensive ones and cheap ones and at the end of the day they work about the same since the cheapies are throwaways. JMO

Brickie

There is nothing wrong in engaging in civil debate.

It is nice to read once in a blue moon a post from someone that hasn't been screwed over by Safeguard. Yes, it's that rare even given the fact that I'm member of quite a few boards.

Since we were on the topic of company that suck, here's just a few more:

FAS

Philbricks

High Class Properties (CA)

MCS

5 Brothers

__________________
“Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country.” – Ronald Reagan

oteroproperties

MTMTNMAN,

Any company you work for is getting rich off your labor. Just because 1 company pays a little more then the other doesn't make them your friend. They are all in business to make money as are you.

I can't say any better then you what a fair discount rate is for a national companies business model. I'm sure any company would pay different depending on the region. What I can tell you is I don't loose 50% to my national. This would be impossible in our case because when we bid jobs here we send them directly to the banks on our letterhead. We bid using HUD guidelines. Because of this it would be very hard for them to take money on top of the standard rate discount. As I said earlier I don't do REO. Your numbers and proceedures are WAY different from P&P. Our allowables depend on the client not HUD guidlines because our work is all pre-sale. There is only one client that I know of that pays less then HUD rates. I hate doing work for them but I take the good with the bad.

As for my pittance, I would rather not say what I brought in last year but they got $80,000 of it and while I would have loved to take that bonus at the end of the year I would hardly call my bottom line pittance.

thanks for the post,

__________________
Residential Electrician 95-04
Residential Construction Manager 04-06
Real Estate Investor 05-06
Property Preservation Contractor 05-current

oteroproperties

Brikie,

welcome to the debate. When my updater went to the Safeguard convention she met with a bunch of people that said FAS was the greatest company to work for, but that was where the praising stopped because i've heard nothing but bad things ever since. That didn't stop me from applying to them though because i heard the same about Safeguard and they were fine with me. Nothing ever came of it but I did talk with them a few times. I also went to MCS corporate office as it's in the same building as my accountant. They said they were saturated with contractors in my region. Nothing ever came from them either. I worked for Cyprexx for a while. pay was great and within 2 weeks, but they didnt have enough work for me to assign a crew so I dropped them (I regret that decision)

The problem I have with all this critisism is that I don't know how long any of these people have been doing this and what they are comparing to. To give you an example of my time in the industry, I remember when we got paid to take pictures. We would develop them and mail them to company with the keys. I was very young and was an employee, but i remember using the polaroids. Those days we covered the whole state 2 days south, 2 days central 2 days north, home 1 day (if we were lucky). The guy I replaced retired never having used a GPS or a small digital camera. He was using the old insurance adjuster cameras, the ones that use the 3.5 floppys, yeah i said it floppy's!! That thing was HUGE!!

I have had some horror stories of my own with some other so called nationals, but I cut my losses before it got too bad and later found out they lost our regions m&m sub-contract for non performance. Had I known that they were not actually the client I would have never even signed up with them. The owner called me a couple months later trying to get me to go with the new m&m but their fee schedule just didn't work for us.

__________________
Residential Electrician 95-04
Residential Construction Manager 04-06
Real Estate Investor 05-06
Property Preservation Contractor 05-current

FremontREO

Boy I remember the polaroids! I hate to admit this but I remember when the service companies didn't even require photos They had inspectors that actually knew what they were doing and judged your work and if it passed than all was good and if it didn't the inspector would personally call ya and discuss what they needed different and it was fixed. Were those the good days? I don't know but it sure was a lot more effecient in my opinion. Computers, cell phones and the high speed internet has taken our freedom away since you can never "escape" to a job and just work without 20 calls interupting the day.
I think that everyone in the P&P or REO has to remember 1 thing: 1) use this business as a marketing tool. As a contractor the preservation field has opened more doors than I would have ever imagined. Meeting condo association presidents and acquiring their lawnservices or their emergency water extractions/rebuilds or working with different property managers and doing the simple things like carpet cleaning 500 units/homes a year. The possibilities are endless.
We evolved in the trades from doing nearly 90% of our business 10 years ago in the P&P field to now,10 years later, we are doing 48% of our gross revenues in the preservation field. Our take home is greater and our work force has grown 10 fold.
Don't depend on only preservation work. Use it as a tool. I'm glad to give suggestions and also always taking suggestions. As a contractor we really are a "band of brothers/sisters".

BPWY

The first time I did P&P work email was not required only a fax #.

We also overnight mailed in our 35 mm film along with completion paper work.