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83 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM Since 2006, VRM's staff and supplier recruiting, purchasing and partnership decisions have been driven by the company's strong commitment to its clients while promoting a culture of diversity, inclusion and community. Its vendor partners include a number of women, minority, disabled, veteran and LGBT-owned businesses. e company continually identifies, sources and partners with organizations that help identify and develop small minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned businesses at regional and local levels. is enables the company to satisfy specific socio-economic small business goals, as well as HERA goals. Using local, diverse businesses also enables VRM to provide the highest levels of performance and execution by leveraging local, socio-demographic intel and understanding that its competitors don't provide. As a certified minority-owned business, VRM understands the industry's challenges and established a number of programs in a continually evolving Diversity & Inclusion initiative. Included among those programs is a proprietary sourcing solution that provides greater levels of tiered reporting and tracking of opportunities to diverse and women-owned businesses. e program also employs internal and external training through VRM's training business division – VRM University (VRMU) to provide industry sustainability and equal access to diverse businesses. VRM found that many of the challenges to increasing diversity utilization revolve around the education and training required to move a vendor from a self-certified designation to a formal or recognized certification where each certification body has a different set of standards and administrative tasks. Some of these tasks create barriers that undercut an agency's intended outcome. To overcome these challenges, VRM implemented a mentoring and training program that enables these vendors to navigate and understand the certification process. is enables better utilization, tracking and reporting of true diversity spend. e company's fair, unbiased approach to vetting, selecting and setting up third-party vendors has resulted in a vendor / subcontractor diversity spend of almost 60%. As recently as last year, VRMU launched e Diversity & Inclusion Self-Assessment Tool kit, which is a free resource designed to provide a free alternative for financial service businesses to benchmark, document and report their compliance with the proposed standards mandated by section 342 of the Dodd Frank Act. In 2016, they will launch the industry's most comprehensive online sourcing portal for the mortgage and real estate industry. CHERYL TRAVIS JOHNSON, COO, VRM Mortgage Services DIVERSITY PERSPECTIVES For over a decade, VRM Mortgage Services has employed, trained and sourced the highest- performing, most diverse workforce available and provides equal opportunities for small and minority-owned businesses. EAST MAKES A COMEBACK IN JULY HOME VALUE FORECAST Favorable real estate trends previously experienced out West have now begun to head East as shown in this month's Pro Teck Valuation Services Home Value Fore- cast. Pro Teck attributes this to be further evidence of a broad national recovery. In last month's Home Value Forecast's top ten ranking, the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC CBSA was the only East Coast representative, but this month, it was shown that half of the top ten CBSAs are from the East. "Looking deeper into our ranking shows that out of the 35 CBSAs we label 'hot' in our market condition ranking, 18 of them are from eastern states," said Tom O'Grady, CEO of Pro Teck Valuation Services. "Looking at all seven of our market condi- tion ratings shows that almost 70 percent of the CBSAs we track are in a normal condition or better – further evidence of a broad recovery." Specifically, Richmond, VA, reported for more than ten years before the housing crash between 6,000 - 8,000 single family homes added to the community per year. e report states that this has been cut in half over the last eight years, and has led to the current limited supply. But despite this, Richmond, much like the rest of the coun- try, according to Pro Teck has seen an uptick in permits as builders continue to ramp up construction. Pro Teck believes that balance should return as new construction increases. e report shows three Michigan CBSAs are still struggling with foreclo- sures affecting the recovery. For example, Flint's REO inventory has been high for nine years, thus dragging down prices and not allowing any substantial appreciation, according to Pro Teck Additionally, the report notes that Flint's water crisis is not over, and unfiltered water still has high levels of lead. Pro Teck, cites Peter Muennig, a professor of public health at Columbia University, as having calculated that the 8,000+ Flint children found with elevated blood lead levels since 2014 will lead to $395 million in social costs for those exposed. Pro Teck believes while the water issues are not fully solved, there has been progress though and they hope for further progress that brings people and businesses back to the area.

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