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» VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 69 COVER STORY INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT tion's top 10 list of cities for home flipping. But what happened to the real estate in other urban areas that investors didn't find as promising? Without investors to step in and buy up dis- tressed assets, the cities ended up taking those prop- erties back, many at auction for overdue property tax. Hundreds of homes in cities around the country have been bulldozed down in the hope that the land beneath them might attract investors. Meanwhile, families there keep looking for homes to buy. THE MISSING LINK Traditionally, it has been the community-based organizations working in our cities to guide new residents and renters into the ranks of homeown- ers. Credit availability has only recently loosened to the point that significant numbers of these under- served prospective borrowers can be served. Now, the problem is finding them homes to buy. It's not that the homes don't exist. ey do. It's just that, for many of these cities, the municipal- ity has taken back the property but does not have the technology solution available to effectively outsource the marketing and management to make it move-in ready. e cities would love to make this happen, as more homeowners increases the tax base and rebuilds communities. At the same time, there are construction contractors, many that are minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned, who would love to have the work of rehabilitating these properties if someone would only hire them to do so. We've already mentioned that investors are creating loan products that can meet the needs of these borrowers. It seems that all of the pieces are in place to help communities rebuild, but some- thing is keeping them all from coming together. In addition, if the investors that have served other cities by buying and flipping distressed real estate could be enticed to enter these cities, they could help or at least bring a welcome source of liquidity to provide rehabilitation loans. In some ways, it's like having all of the parts for a high-performance engine lying on the workbench. Until you put them together, you're not going to get anywhere. Just as the engine is the technology that operates the vehicle, cities need a technology that can serve as the engine for revitalization. TAPPING INTO THE RIGHT TECH Regardless of the "engine," we find that revitalizing our urban areas will require capital for fuel. Until cities or their residents have access to this capital, they cannot rehabilitate the real estate that cities already own. But to bring their capital to these cities, investors will demand access to better information about how their funds are being invested. e first requirement of the engine is full trans- parency. Today's community-based organizations do not have access to technology that offers a task- based automated workflow, access to a network of service providers, and the reporting capabilities these investors will require, even though it is avail- able today. What we need is some technological hub that would allow real estate owners (municipalities and others) to interact with lenders (who bring the fuel) to provide funding to residents. ose residents would then work with community-based organiza- tions to become prepared for homeownership, as well as professional asset managers who, through the efforts of local construction companies, would rehabilitate properties for them to buy. To work, it will take all of the parties working in tandem—and until they are all interacting on the same technology platform, they won't have the transparency to know who is doing what as they work together toward the goal. Of course, it will take more than a transparent project management platform to achieve the goal. Compliance requirements will mandate the use of a professional real estate asset management plat- form with built-in safeguards to keep the project on track in a fully compliant manner. Technology development is our area of exper- tise. We know that good real estate disposition software could easily empower any party to the transaction, such as a nonprofit organization, by giving them the power to connect to the other re- quired parties and guide the project to completion. It would, in effect, transform these organizations from charities to legitimate real estate business partners who have real opportunities to share with investors, construction companies, community governments, and residents who want to become homeowners. LEARNING OUR LESSON Could something like this work, bringing so many parties together, each with their own objectives, and guide them to a mutually beneficial outcome? It's happening today in cities around America. Software like this exists today and was instrumental in helping the nation's mortgage loan servicers move hundreds of thousands of properties back into the market after foreclosure. It is now be- ing used to help cities attract the capital they need to revitalize their communities. In time, we will see the American homeown- ership levels return to pre-crash levels, in part due to the efforts in our cities to rebuild their lost communities. ey'll use a system like the one we've described to bring all of the required parties together. As they do, they'll be providing a valuable lesson to cities around the globe that may one day allow them to follow suit, attracting capital and expertise to improve their own urban areas as well. "Hundreds of homes in cities around the country have been bulldozed down in the hope that the land beneath them might attract investors. Meanwhile, families there keep looking for homes to buy."

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