If you can take a photo, you can do an occupancy inspection.

James Debari is the author of Property Preservation 101 and Practical Persuasion. He is the owner of Predator Pest Control located in Howard Beach, New York and the co-founder of Metro Property Preservation. He and a friend got their start in the industry in 2006 by doing occupancy inspections. Each month their sales increased, and Metro rapidly grew into a full-service company that offered everything from trash-outs to winterizations. In just half a year their sales hit $130,000 per month. Metro eventually became a multimillion-dollar enterprise that had an office, a warehouse, a fleet of vans and 26 employees. James sold his stake in the company in 2011.

Based on James experience the least expensive, easiest way to get into the property preservation industry is the way he started, by doing occupancy inspections. The money isn’t huge, but neither is the investment. The only tools required are a vehicle, a camera and a computer or other device to upload photos at the end of the day. James started doing these inspections in-between pest control jobs.

“I was always in these areas. I could pick up 50 or 60 of these and make a few hundred extra bucks as an add-on.”

When they began doing occupancy inspections the work was very easy. They didn’t even have to get out of the car.

“You drive up in front of the house. You take a picture of the house. If the grass is long, the mail is stacked up, there’s papers on the front lawn and there’s no cars in the driveway you’re probably going to say that it’s not occupied. But if you pull up, there’s cars in the driveway, it’s well-manicured, the lights are on, you can see people in the house then you’re going to mark it off as occupied.”

These simple jobs gave James and his partner knowledge, confidence, and provided a foundation to grow in the industry. To their surprise Metro’s workload began to surge.

“We started doing these and they began putting more on our plate. So we thought we should hire a couple of guys to go out and do this for us during the day. It’s easy work, you just need a driver’s license. So we hired a couple of guys and those couple of hundred turned into a couple of thousand. And then not before long, by the end of the month we were doing 10,000 inspections.”

This incredible flood of work came from a few, large companies in the mortgage field service industry.

“We did work for Safeguard and the other big one was LPS. That was a very big one that we dealt with. We were nominated the number one property preservation contractor in the country by LPS. LPS [Lender Processor Services] was one of the largest servicing companies of default mortgages field services in the country along with Safeguard. That’s in 2008 and 2009.”

Within 3 months these companies began to request additional types of work from Metro. James was always eager to learn and he never turned down a job.

“The head called up and he said while you are taking a look at this property do you mind rekeying the door? We had no idea what that was and they told us we had to buy this lock. The lock is $7, we’ll pay you $50 to go there. You take the old lock off, put the new lock on, put a lock box on it with the keys for it and you are good to go.”

From there they started doing board-ups and lawn care. James and his partner continued to expand their skills and their company’s sales.

“Once we did the first board up that was it, they began calling us like nuts.”

They continued to add services to Metro’s offerings until it became a full-service company. Adding evictions was an important milestone. Once that service became available Metro quickly grew into a multimillion-dollar operation.

“We were getting paid thousands of dollars per eviction. We were doing 6 to 8 evictions per day and then all the add-ons. Once they were evicted, we hired the movers to move everything out. Then we had to board up, trash it out, fix any holes in the roof, winterize it, cut the grass, rekey it, you name it. Each property was becoming, just to get it started and up and running, at least $3000 to $4000. We were doing 6 of those a day. It was just insane, it literally happened overnight.”

Metro’s phenomenal growth and large staff were a challenge to manage. One of James’ solutions was to write a handbook that his crews could follow while they worked in the field. Property Preservation 101 is based on this book.

Various jobs illustrated and explained from Property Preservation 101.

“It’s a field manual. That’s really what the book is. It’s a field manual of how to do everything from occupancy inspections to evictions to boards-ups to trash-outs.”

James’ crews followed the best practices in this guidebook to ensure a respectable profit on each job. For example they used 3 trucks to maximize efficiency and minimize cost when they did trash-outs.

“One truck is for the clothing, one truck would be for all the books and anything like that, and the other truck would be for any utensils or anything that I could sell on the aftermarket. And so I would take all the books and we’d donate them because every pound that you have to dump you have to pay for. And then we would donate the clothes. All the utensils and metal would be taken to the scrap yard and that would pretty much pay for the trucks.”

The book also provided steps for his employees to follow when they did small jobs. This was important because if the work wasn’t done in a very specific way the banks wouldn’t pay.

“You go to the house, you take a picture of the street that the house is on. Then take a picture of the house in front of it. Then walk up to the front door and take a picture of the number of the house. Then take a picture of the old door lock. Then take a picture of you unscrewing the old door lock and taking it off. Then take a picture of the box you’re going to rekey it with. Each box has a code for that key. Then take it out and take pictures of you screwing the door lock into the door. And then a picture of the key inside the door lock. And then a picture of the lock code that you put on the lock box closed shut.”

Challenging jobs like evictions were also covered. To perform a successful eviction requires practical knowledge but it also requires mental preparation. James first eviction took place in Fort Apache, The Bronx in New York City. He did not know what to expect and it was trial by fire.

“I was just thrown into it. The bank asked if I could do an eviction? I thought sure how hard could it be? They told me to get a moving company and meet the Sheriff at the property tomorrow morning. And I thought fine. I got a moving company, met the Sheriff, and he asked me, you’re going in are you ready? And I thought what do you mean am I ready? What are you talking about?”

“He told me alright kick in the door. I asked what do you mean kick in the door? Aren’t you guys the Sheriff? And they responded, yeah but you’re the representative of the bank so if I kick in the door I have to pay for the door. If you kick in the door nobody has to pay for anything. So I kicked in the door. The Sheriff comes behind me and we started going through the house. He tells me to start kicking in every door in the house. Every door? He said, every door start kicking them in. I start kicking in doors and there are 6, 7 guys sleeping in 1 room. And every room in the whole house has got 6 or 7 people in it. Babies, families, everybody. It was crazy. I’m talking every single room, even the closets had people sleeping in them. I couldn’t believe it. It was a huge, what we call over here SRO, Single Room Occupancy. They pay these landlords, crazy amounts of money, the landlords stop making their mortgage payments years ago and just collect like insane until it comes time and everybody gets kicked out and the bank takes the house over again.”

The incredible volume of evictions and other work began to recede after the economy improved in 2011. However, James is confident that there will soon be another surge of work across the property preservation industry.

“I saw the writing on the wall in 2006 and I’m going to tell you that the writing is on the wall again. Property preservation is going to explode in the next 6 to 8 months. There it is going to be enormous work all over again because of Covid and the moratorium on evictions.”

“We’re talking about a year and a half now of moratoriums on evictions. When that floodgate opens up it’s going to be just like it was in 2008, 2009.”

“If you want to make money this is what you need to get into now. And do it now because it is going to explode again and it’s going to be ripe for the picking.”