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63 our network that have worked with MCS for a number of years. So those vendor relationships are deep and strong." Mosley said MCS' average employee tenure is strong as well, at six years, with the management team in place for nearly a decade. "It's very much about people, whether we're talking about our team members, our clients, or our partners in the field. Making sure our vendors are successful is one clear key to success." A 30-year staple of the property preservation sector, Safeguard Properties offers a mobile app for inspections, enabling inspectors to check boxes for specific items and take and upload photos when prompted, rather than returning to an office before doing that work. Safeguard's Safeview™ Inspect Mobile is a real-time, mobile inspection application designed to provide full-service field support. Smart scripting enables customizable survey forms for different work types, which combines with industry-first multimedia capturing technology and built-in risk mitigation features such as location-based services. "We want to decrease the barrier to entry to use our apps as much as possible," said Elizabeth Squires, Director of Client Account Management for Safeguard. Also on the tech front, MCS utilizes a proprietary technology system and integrations with various third-party systems of investors, insurers, and other business partners across the country. e proprietary MCS technology is a workflow management system featuring three modules. Employees and associates use the internal system—MCS 360—to issue and review work orders, helping drive quality performance. Second, the Vendor 360 module allows vendors to see what work has been assigned to them, deadlines, and other relevant info. Finally, Client 360 enables clients to place and review work orders, view results, look at photos, or run reports. "e vendors rely on our system," Mosley said. "We pride ourselves on our technology; we want it to be very, very user friendly. Most things come back to process, people, and technology, which are the three core focuses for us. You have to have the right vendors, good relationships with those vendors, and the technology in place to be able to transact and work with those vendors on a day-to-day basis and wrap that around sound processes." According to Mosley, the adaptability and flexibility provided by these tools give MCS a significant advantage in maintaining those relationships and tackling the headwinds facing property preservation. "We want to make the vendor experience as flexible and nimble as possible," Mosley said. According to Breedlove, MSI also uses proprietary and third-party technologies that work together to provide users with the information they need in a concise, informative, and intuitive matter, regardless of the technology used at the front end. FOLLOWING THE RULES Even as national foreclosure moratoria reach their end, the property preservation sector must still navigate networks of state and municipal laws governing properties in default, each with its own expiration dates and other critical nuances. Ensuring adherence to these regulatory signposts can be challenging for servicers and the property preservation companies that partner with them. "We don't need an economist to tell us about economic data. We need somebody to explain what a public official may do next because that is more impactful than the actual economic data," Breedlove said. "When the forbearance rate was at 8%, volumes were at all-time lows. If you had said [before the moratoria] that a certain percentage of people would be 60 or 90 days behind on their mortgages and asked us to project volumes, I think anybody in our industry would have been very wrong in their answer." Regardless of these hurdles, Breedlove says communication is integral, as is trying to get the process off on the right foot at the beginning. "An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure," he explained. "It starts with securing the work order and doing a thorough inspection of the property. We put a huge emphasis on that point in time. Everything else is important, but if you get it wrong at the beginning, it's going to be much harder to get it right at the end." "e biggest hurdle I tend to find is individual state requirements," Russell said. For example, Washington doesn't want an owner to secure a property that is not yet in foreclosure, even if the property is abandoned. "We don't need an economist to tell us about economic data. We need somebody to explain what a public official may do next because that is more impactful than the actual economic data." —Baker Breedlove, President and CEO, Mortgage Specialists, International

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