Foreclosure Trash Outs: Property Preservation Cleans Up The Mess

The Secret Business Opportunity With two million foreclosures predicted in 2011 - and five million mortgages determined to be in trouble - the property preservation business opportunity continues unabated.

Property preservation - the business of performing foreclosure trash outs on abandoned homes - makes it a lot easier on real estate agents like Brian Schartz, Oregon, according to a new article in the Eugene, Oregon newspaper, "The Register-Guard." His number one rule when he enters a foreclosure?

Don't open the refrigerator.

Schartz also makes sure to tie garbage bags over his shoes when he has to check out a home where the owners have either been evicted or have left the place. And that's when he calls someone like Rick Sepulveda, who owns a local property preservation company.

He's the guy who does open the refrigerator.

"There's been more than one occasion where it's been easier to just get rid of the refrigerator because of the severity of how bad it is — such as completely filled with maggots and rotting meat," he told the newspaper.

Other former homeowners who leave their properties do more than just leave the kitchen stocked with food. One cut out a hole in the kitchen wall to take the Jacuzzi tub with them; another smashed the walls in with golf clubs; and another painted a giant evil clown face on the garage door.

Sepulveda and other property preservation companies have been kept very busy in the Eugene area since the foreclosure crisis first hit in 2007. And they expect to keep very busy in the months and years to come.

"We're now seeing a lot of unemployed who were getting unemployment benefits," said broker Lynn Hunter of Century 21 Westover Realty, which processes 85 to 90 foreclosures at any given time.

The irony is that the unemployed will continue to keep the relatively-unknown property preservation professionals working hard.

"It's a whole system in real estate culture that people really don't know exists," said Justin Thayer, a real estate agent at Keller Williams Realty. "There's only a few of us who do it."

And those few sometimes get rude surprises.

"All signs pointed to nobody lives there," Sepulveda said about one house he was hired to clean out. "There was no water. The electric company had physically removed the meter. All the toilets were completely full…the house was pretty much trashed."

After he was finished however? "A lady came up and was very irate. 'How dare you come into my house?' We just left. That's the Realtor's problem and the bank's problem. Not mine."


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Frank Patrick, who has years of experience in the property preservation field, has already trained many newcomers to the business with great success. The inside knowledge he has of such complex issues as licensing, insurance and how to best deal with REO sellers to build good word-of-mouth, is invaluable to anyone wishing to enter this lucrative field. Learn more at http://www.REOResQ.com