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62 Considering the scale of these portfolios, which contain tens of thousands of investment properties, that equals a huge savings to the bottom line. Huge savings probably wasn't on Davis' mind when he went more than two years without income, eating ramen noodles and riding his bike to the office, which regularly saw 80 to 100-hour work weeks. "e hardest part about creating a startup is that you rarely have a safety net," he said. "I once had a trusted advisor tell me that the types of entrepreneurs he's looking for are ones who jump off of the building and then try to build the safety net on the way down. What he really meant by that is that entrepreneurs need to be aggressively motivated to succeed." RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM "Unlike a good bottle of wine, vacant properties do not get better with age," Says Robert Klein. And Klein would know. e Chairman and founder of Safeguard Properties, a mortgage field servicing company that has grown from a handful of employees in 1990 to more than 1,500 today, Klein has seen up close the effect that abandoned, boarded-up houses can have on a community, especially during the recent housing downturn and foreclosure crisis. But instead of turning a blind eye toward the deleterious effects of community blight, the businessman and philanthropist recognized these far-reaching problems, and founded Community Blight Solutions. e organization concentrates on two main initiatives: fast- tracking foreclosure legislation and replacing the seemingly ubiquitous plywood on vacant and abandoned properties with clear polycarbonate boarding. "Community blight is a cancer that can be cured," Klein said. "By working together to change legislation and policies that allow blight to fester and by attacking the problem block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, we can break the cycle and make our communities healthy, safer and productive once again." Truly tackling the problem of community blight took acknowledging the many issues that led to it, including the ineffective, unattractive boarding-up methods investors were using— ones that encouraged crime, ruined community curb appeal, and sent local home values plummeting. "e costs associated with plywood-boarded vacant and abandoned properties continue to escalate," Klein said. "From vandalism to the property, damage caused by weather because plywood warps over time and costs for re- boarding, we knew there must be a better way to secure unoccupied properties." To address this issue—as well as the larger blight problem at hand—Community Blight Solutions got creating, launching SecureView, a state-of-the-art window and door system made of clear polycarbonate. "SecureView is a practical and attractive alternative to plywood boarding which has become the ugly and stigmatizing symbol of community blight," Klein said. "Communities, lenders, and servicers across the country are using it to secure their properties, protect, and maintain the value of their asset, and support neighborhood stabilization." SecureView and Community Blight Solutions' legislative efforts have been successful, too. Klein is happy to report that Ohio, Maryland, and other states have passed new fast-tracked legislation. In March 2017, Fannie Mae instructed servicers that clear boarding should be installed on properties already sealed with plywood, and provided a 90-day compliance period. A new clear- boarding allowable was included in the recent clarification, and Freddie Mac recently updated its allowable for servicers using clear boarding on pre-foreclosure properties. BREAKING BOTTLENECKS Excellence is a continuous process, a wise man once said, and the path to a high-performance mortgage business is littered with countless processes. Business process improvement and technology should support each other, but that isn't always the case. "e biggest pain point for most companies is getting their workflow applications, which are the conduit to their business processes, to catch up with the ever-changing "The hardest part about creating a startup is that you rarely have a safety net. I once had a trusted advisor tell me that the types of entrepreneurs he's looking for are ones who jump off of the building and then try to build the safety net on the way down. What he really meant by that is that entrepreneurs need to be aggressively motivated to succeed." –Ken Davis, President and CEO, TaskEasy

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