Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A foreclosed home in Cincinnati. Contractors inspect or repair an estimated 3.3 million homes like
this one each month.
Many of the contractors willing to engage in the dirty work of cleaning and repairing these homes
have landed there by way of joblessness -- among them laid-off loan officers and other mortgage
industry refugees striving to make an honest living in a bad economy.
Others are felons or cheats drawn to a sector that boomed after the housing bubble popped, seeking
opportunity in an industry with a history of underpaying its workers and neglecting background
checks. Fierce competition among the businesses that hire these contractors and weak supervision
by banks and federal agencies have prompted some workers to take shortcuts and to do work they
are not licensed to do.
Adam Reynolds, a Naples, Fla., contractor who ran a field services company called REO Proz until it
folded last year, said he was routinely dispatched by banks or larger field services companies to drill
out locks to see whether properties were vacant, only to find that tenants still lived there and had
never missed a payment.
Countless times," he said, he received orders to clean out properties that had personal photos on the
shelves and fresh food in the refrigerator.
"I've even had an order sending me to a property that was never owned by any bank," he said. "I
know it has got to be painstaking at the top to keep tabs on everyone, but these errors are lifechanging for some people.
For the contractors, the work is by turns grim and dangerous. Entering other people's property
armed with nothing more than flashlights, they sometimes encounter squatters and criminals who
use boarded-up properties as drug dens, sometimes provoking violent confrontations.
Ive been chased by dogs, Ive been spat at, Ive had things thrown at me, said Mary Sisson a mother
of three who inspects abandoned homes in the suburbs of New York City. Ive walked in on gang
members.
The full costs of the industrys shortcomings are borne by more than immediate victims: The
consequences ripple out to surrounding communities. Shoddy repair work allows homes to
disintegrate into eyesores and neighborhood hazards, attracting vagrants, junkies and thieves who
tear out installations such as copper wiring. Pipes burst, filling basements with water, while broken
windows allow rain to penetrate, spawning the growth of dangerous mold. Lawns grow into
burgeoning forests, giving cover to destructive rodents and pests.
In Klamath Falls, Ore., Jonathan Hankins, his wife and young son said they were forced to abandon
the home they bought from Freddie Mac last year after they started suffering from nosebleeds,
respiratory problems and mouth sores. A home testing kit revealed that parts of the house were
contaminated with 76 times the allowable maximum level of methamphetamine residue, Hankins
said. A local realtor hired to clean out the property never reported that the home was used as a drug
lab, Hankins said.
Last year, Secret Service agents working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency raided American
Mortgage Field Services in Brooksville, Fla., north of Tampa. The owner recently pleaded guilty to
creating fraudulent inspection reports for work that was never done over a three-year period,
overbilling Bank of America, which hired the company to inspect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
properties, by $12.7 million.
In addition to Fannie, Freddie and other mortgage companies, many abandoned and foreclosed
homes are owned directly by the federal government, including the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, which also hires contractors to watch over the homes. An audit last September
by HUD's Office of Inspector General found that 60 percent of sampled homes were not properly
maintained. The auditor who checked up on one home, near Santa Ana, Calif., commented in field
notes that the property was "filthy" with "broken windows, roaches and hair in [the] sink" even
though it was supposedly inspected just two days before by a contractor hired by HUD.
The most common problem appears to be inspectors breaking into still-occupied homes. Contractors
are regularly dispatched to secure houses against damage from cold weather or to perform so-called
"trash outs" in which they empty homes of belongings. Several contractors told The Huffington Post
that they have frequently been sent on such jobs only to find on arrival that the legal owner still lives
in the house. Most leave after they force their way inside and find family photos and other evidence
that indicate a house is still occupied by its owner. Some do not.
PIRATE MENTALITY
In Whippany, N.J., Lynn Stringas claims that contractors working for CoreLogic Field Services, a
Westlake, Texas-based company working for Wells Fargo, forced their way into her home three
separate times. Like many others who have had run-ins with bank contractors, her home was in the
flowing from the largest field services companies, a group that includes Safeguard, Corelogic,
Lender Processing Services in Jacksonville, Fla., and Cyprexx Services in Bradenton, Fla. These
small companies, in turn, often hire contractors of their own, which sometimes farm the work out yet
again.
With each layer of subcontracting, though, oversight tends to diminish along with compensation,
generating pressure and opportunity to cut corners, contractors said.
There can be two or three companies between you and the bank taking chunks of this money out for
doing nothing but shuffling paperwork, said Wayne Frazier, a general contractor in Maryland.
The trickle-down effect often means that banks and taxpayers arent getting much for each dollar
spent. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development pays a maximum of $30 for an
initial home inspection and $20 for each subsequent inspection, according to agency pricing sheets.
Angie Montgomery in Cincinnati said she earns $3 per inspection -- $4 if the job requires that she go
inside a house. Out of that, she must pay for gas and car maintenance, along with liability insurance
premiums. She must also contend, she said, with angry homeowners who see her as an agent of the
same bank that they are fighting with to avoid foreclosure. She has been yelled at, bitten by dogs
and once entered a home where the vindictive former owner had cut a hole in the floor, then covered
it with a carpet, she said.
Every concern raised by the Office of the Inspector in the [audit] has been addressed," said Jerry
Brown, a HUD spokesman in a statement. "We have started working on the fixes and we anticipate
they will be completed by Sept. 30, 2013. The OIG has been briefed on our plan and is fully aware of
our commitment to right the wrongs."
Though HUD oversees a relatively small number of abandoned and vacant homes -- about 40,000 at
any given time -- experienced contractors said the same issues are at play throughout the industry.
Bruce Davenport, a Georgia contractor who fixes up vacant homes, estimated that 70 percent of the