Although I have not been doing property preservation business too long, just thought that I would give my advice to those who want to take a different approach to real estate investing. 

I have been a wholesaler and flipper since day 1 when I started into real estate.  But as time went by and prices continued to drop I found it harder and harder to make any money doing this!

By fluke, I stumbled onto a website discussing this business.  Since I had lots of experience rehabbing houses and had a lot of tools I decided (along with my brother in law) to try it.  I figured I could not do worse than I was in wholesaling and flipping!

I started out discovering who the "big players" were in the business.  I found that Safeguard Properties was the largest in the US.  Other big players were LPS Services, PK Management, Altisource Portfolio, Field Asset Services to mention only a few.  I went to their sites and found out that I would need insurance- workmans comp and a liability policy to work for any of them. 

I contacted as many of these companies as I could- email, phone calls.  It was hard, but I finally got our first piece of business about 45 days later.  There has to be a need in the area that you want to work for until the look for new contractors.  But, be persistant!  A lot of the contractors do a bad job so they are always looking for new a good contractors!  I also begin calling on REO Real Estate agents locally.  Those I could also drive to and drop off my card.  I also went after smaller banks.  I had found out that the larger national banks- Regions, BOA, Wachovia etc only use the large nation Property Preservation Companies.  But.... the smaller banks will use the smaller guy.  I got a list and made lots of personal calls on them, got the persons name and email and put them on my email list. 

From that first piece of business it has really started to blossom!  No, I am not killing it yet, but I am working every day and have even had to hire a couple of guys to help.  I split my time between looking for new business and doing some of the work myself.

The work consists of Initial Inspections (when the company gets the property from HUD, FHA etc.), to rekeying the property, to boarding up windows, trashing out garbage and other stuff in the property, lawn care and other type of preservation work as well.

I am going to continue to do this at least until the market starts to come back!  The foreclosure market has not yet even begun to bottom out, and anyone that says that it is, is wrong!  There is more work that we can get to!

Oh yea, try to get a website also.  It seperates you from 98% of the others in the business.  Websites are cheap!

Check out mine: www.foreverfloridaone.com

Thanks and good luck!

Joe Sherman

joe@foreverfloridaone.com