Building Partnerships in Property Preservation

Randy Cecil, President and CFO of Truly Noble Services, spoke with DS News at the 2016 Five Star Conference & Expo to discuss the hand and hand roles that property preservation and agents and brokers play when it comes to asset management, and what the biggest challenges are currently in property preservation.

What role does property preservation play in generating leads for agents and brokers?

I think the fact that in the day-to-date conduct of our business, it is a broad spectrum of services that we provide. It could be initial services on a foreclosed property, or it could be renovation repair of an asset and that brings in different trades. That exposes us to different individuals in the communities and those individuals may end up being buyers or sellers of real estate property in the future. There are also cases where we are on site and curious neighbors or friends of neighbors want to view the property. Though we don't allow this, we are quick to refer them to the listing's brokers in hopes that the person might get in contact with the broker to talk about assets available. We are always going to turn to the realtor and push that lead toward them to help them get into the mix.

What can realtors do on their side to better foster a relationship with those in property preservation?

If they have a buyer or a seller and they are preparing a property that they are going to put on the market, there needs to be some preparatory work done to that property. This could be minor to major work that needs to be done to the property to get it prepared for sale but we would like to be in line to get an opportunity to take on that work. This can be accomplished by way of the broker helping refer us on the front end or introducing us to the buyer for follow up work after purchase.

What are the main challenges that you are currently dealing with in property preservation?

It is two-fold. The first challenge that we are all facing is available workforce with the skills-set necessary to do the work. Because of other industry’s changes, for example the oil and gas industry, a lot of prospective workers have been drawn out that could be potentially usual, but it is about finding the workforce that can take on the hundreds of projects in a given month in various markets.

The second challenge is knowing who the players are that handle the assets. The transfer of assets in a portfolio from the lenders to the auction and investment pools change the hands of who is dealing with the property preservation. So our challenge being able to identify who the buyers are that we need to get in front of to do the work. The work hasn't changed; it is the decision makers who are changing. This means that it could be the traditional asset manager or that it is now a management company setting that is buying and selling properties. Additionally, they could be an income producing company or they could be a flipper. Bottom line is we just need to figure out who we are getting in front of.